COOKERY. 165 



with a ladle and set in a cool place to harden; it should 

 then be worked over with the ladle until perfectlj 

 freed from the butter-milk. In no part of the process 

 should the butter be touched with the hands, but be 

 handled entirely with the ladle and paddles. In hot 

 wxather it is sometimes worked with paddles in clear 

 cold water, which assists in extracting the buttermilk. 

 After the butter has been worked a sufficient time to 

 give it, as the dealers say, a "good grain," salt it mode- 

 rately. If to each pint of salt one ounce of fine sugar 

 is added, it improves the fiavor. If the butter is de- 

 signed to be taken soon to market, let it be worked in 

 small cakes of one pound each, handsomely marked or 

 stamped, and put by in a cool place, and taken to mar- 

 ket in the morning. But if it is designed to be kept 

 through the season, let it be packed in a firkin and set 

 by in a cool place for a few days, when the butter will 

 be found to have shrunk from the sides of the firkin: the 

 head should be put in, and through a hole bored in it, 

 the cavity should be filled with strong brine, the hole 

 stopped, and tiie firkin reversed — by which the butter 

 will cleave from the head which was at tiie bottom, 

 and become perfectly surrounded with a streak of brine; 

 in which situation it may be kept sweet through the 

 season. 



TO PREVENT MILK BECOMING SOUK. 



To prevent milk from becoming sour and curdling as 

 it is apt to do in the heat of summer, the milk-men of 

 Paris add a small quantity of sub-carbonate of potash or 

 soda, which saturating tiie acid as it forms, prevents 

 the coagulating or separating of curds, and some of them 

 practice this with so much success as to gain the repu- 

 tation of selling milk that never sours. Often when the 

 coagulation has taken place, they restore the fluidity 

 by a greater or less addition of the fixed alkalies. The 

 acetate which is then formed has no injurious eflfects, 

 and besides, milk contains naturally a small quantity of 

 acetate, but not an atom of really a carbonated alkali. 



