CHAPTER XIV. 



BUTTER JUDGING. 



Expert butter judges, like great musicians, are "born" 

 not "made." A good musician must be born with a good 

 ear, a good butter judge with a good nose. Most people, 

 however, can become fair musicians with proper training, 

 and the same may be said of butter judges. 



By repeated judging and comparing of different sam- 

 ples of butter one will soon become able to make fair 

 discriminations. The important point to learn is to know 

 an ideal butter when you see it. A butter maker can 

 not expect to reach or even approach an ideal butter un- 

 less he has the ideal fixed in mind. 



One can learn much about butter judging by daily ex- 

 amining his own make. But to become expert, he must 

 be able to compare his score with that of recognized 

 experts. Dairy conventions and butter scoring tests offer 

 excellent opportunities for such comparison. 



BASIS FOR JUDGING. 



Butter is judged commercially on the basis of 45 points 

 for flavor, 25 for texture, 15 for color, 10 for salt, and 5 

 for package, total 100. 



Flavor. Strictly speaking flavor means taste. But 

 the use of the term flavor in butter judging usually in- 

 cludes both taste and aroma, the emphasis resting on the 

 latter. Aroma is the odor noticeable when a sample of 

 butter is held close to the nose, hence frequently called 

 "nose" aroma. 



137 



