COLOURING OF BUTTER FOR USE. 177 



96. Colouring of Butter for Use. The requirements of a whole- 

 sale trade, which has to provide throughout the year a good butter 

 of uniform appearance, has brought about a demand which in the 

 course of time has given rise to the practice of adding suitable 

 substances to butter to impart a definite uniform colour. Formerly 

 it constantly varied in colour. This requirement is burdensome 

 and inconvenient to dairies, but it must be complied with so long as 

 the large dealers in the finest butter for export purposes will only 

 pay the best price when the butter possesses the required tint. 

 Butter which is used for home consumption is not coloured, and it 

 is stupid, and serves no end, to colour it with pigments such as the 

 so-called butter colours. 



The following qualities are necessary in a butter colour, viz. 

 that it should colour the butter yellow without imparting to it a 

 foreign taste or smell, that it should contain no substances deleterious 

 to health, that its appearance should not be non-appetitizing, that it 

 should be easy to apply, that it should possess strong colouring 

 properties, and that its price should be in proportion to its true 

 value. 



In the Hamburg market, the butter going to England has to possess a 

 yellowish straw colour, and that going to Spain and Portugal, and also a 

 part of that going to South America, has to be orange yellow. Formerly, 

 in butter exported to different countries to France, Holland, and North 

 Germany all sorts of colouring matters were added, such as saffron, 

 carthamus, logwood, turmeric, carrot-juice, extract of marigold, and annatto, 

 which were generally added to the butter by kneading in. At present, 

 where butter is coloured, it is generally done in the churn, and the liquid 

 in the churn receives an exactly measured quantity of the colouring matter 

 directly before churning, which is without doubt the most efficacious way. 

 The colouring matters used in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden are 

 entirely solutions of the fruit flesh of the annatto tree, indigenous to South 

 America and the East Indies, dissolved chiefly in hemp or sesame oil, and 

 with varying quantities of turmeric colouring matter added to the solu- 

 tions. In using this kind of colour, for butter destined for England, on 

 an average about 4 grams are required or added for every 100 kilos, of 

 milk, or for the cream yielded by this quantity of milk. The butter con- 

 tains, therefore, reckoning 3-5 kilos, of butter for every 100 kilos, of milk, 

 12 per cent or 1-2 gram of colouring matter per kilogram; that is, assum- 

 ing that none of the colouring matter is left behind in the butter-milk. 

 As this, however, is always the case, the butter used in the English market 

 contains on an average about 1 gram of colour per kilogram. If the price 



(M175) M 



