BUTTER. 227 



which quickly reduces the temperature. It is then 

 placed on shelves until the cream separates, when it 

 is taken off and put in vessels for churning. In 

 these it is first allowed to become a little sour, and 

 then the churn is half filled with the cream. In 

 llie best dairies, churning is performed daily, the 

 system being so arranged that a supply of cream is 

 constantly in readiness. In winter, a little warm 

 water is added to the cream, to give to it the proper 

 temperature previous to churning ; and in very hot 

 weather it is sometimes submitted to the cold bath 

 to reduce the heat. When taken from the churn, 

 the butter is put in a shallow vessel, and carefully 

 washed with pure cold water, and then worked with 

 a slight sprinkling of fine salt, whether intended for 

 rolls or for barrelling. The butter is considered 

 best when the cows have been at grass about three 

 weeks : it is then delicious ; is made into fanciful 

 forms of animals, pyramids, &c., stuck over with 

 fragi-ant flowers, and sells as high as sixty or sev- 

 enty cents per pound. . When intended for packing, 

 it is worked up twice or thrice a day with soft, 

 fine salt, for three days, in a shallow tub, there be- 

 ing about two pounds of this salt used for fourteen 

 pounds of butter. After this thorough preparatory 

 working, it is hard packed in thin layers into casks 

 made perfectly sweet and clean. The wood prefer- 

 red is oak, smoothed carefully inside. Three or 

 four days before they are used, the casks are filled 

 with sour whey, and this stands until they are emp- 

 tied and cleansed for the packing of the butter. It 

 is clear, from this description, that, independent of 

 the perfect neatness observed in every part of the 

 process, the excellence of the Dutch butter, and the 

 ease with which it is kept in its original sweetness 

 when packed, is owing to the manner in which it is 

 freed from the least particle of buttermilk by the 

 first washing and the subsequent repeated workings, 

 as well as to the perfect incoiporation of the salt by 

 the same process. 



