20 



MILK 



milk." This corresponds to the Polish "tvarog," the Prussian 

 "zwarg," the German "quarg," the Latin "lac concretum, com- 

 pressum, or coactum," and the English "curd" or "green cheese." 

 It also agrees with Pliny's definition of butter "milk foam contain- 

 ing fat." It is not surprising that at those times butter and 

 cheese were not clearly differentiated. As late as the middle of 

 the eighteenth century it was thought that butter and cheese 

 were fundamentally composed of the same substance. The as- 

 sumed difference was that butter contained more oil than cheese 

 did. It is quite probable, then, that the earliest butter made al- 



Fig. 2. Leather churn (Benno Martiny). 



ways contained much curd and was different from the refined 

 product of modern times. 



Since in ancient Greece cattle were used as draft animals and 

 for meat production not as milk producers it seems likely, 

 that the true art of butter making was learned from other people, 

 probably from the Thracians. The use of butter by the Thracians 

 was reported by Anaxandrides nearly 400 years B. C. 



In Lusitania, the modern Portugal, the use of butter dated 

 back to 60 B. C., as stated by Straban. Galen, in the second 

 century A. D., described the making of butter, but recognized it 

 only as a medical remedy. As a matter of fact, butter was used 



