192 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF DAIRYING. 



mistakes made in the preparation of it, and are only due, to a 

 small extent, to the use of foods unsuitable for milk-cows. These 

 properties or diseases develop in a very characteristic manner in the 

 keeping of preserved butter. The following are the indications of 

 bad butter, which are recognized on the larger butter markets, as, 

 for example, in the Hamburg market. 



The butter is described by the following terms : 



Faults in Appearance. If it contain milky brine, dull and cheesy; if 

 too much worked, opaque and thick; if glittering with fat, because it has 

 been spoiled in the churn or has been too little worked, fatty or oily; and 

 in the case of coloured and salted butter, apart from the proper shade of 

 colour that it ought to possess, flecky, streaked, cloudy. These faults are 

 the result of unskilful colouring or salting, or working the butter in 

 winter in unheated rooms. 



Defects in Firmness. Dull when soft and rich in milky brine; oily, too 

 soft, overworked, dry and hard, burned, that is, dry and friable, and short 

 or crumbling. 



Defects in Flavour and Smell are as follows: Rancid or bitter, terms 

 that are used respectively according to the weaker or stronger develop- 

 ment of the flavour; dull, rank, bitter, uninviting, greasy; lardy when there 

 is a weak tallow flavour, and tallowy when there is a strong tallow 

 flavour. The butter is inclined to develop this flavour if the cows eat 

 much young fresh clover, or if they be supplied with large quantities of 

 tallowish-flavoured oil-cakes. Furthermore, the butter becomes tallowish 

 if it lie for a long period in bright light, or if it be submitted for a short 

 time to the sunlight. Butter, also, which has been frozen and again thawed 

 is occasionally tallowish ; oily when it is accompanied with a strong 

 development of this quite peculiar characteristic flavour; fishy and with 

 the flavour of train-oil. The oily flavour, which only butter made out of 

 soured liquid assumes, is characterized to a certain extent by an increase 

 of the peculiar aroma belonging to this kind of butter, which finally 

 becomes positively repugnant. It is caused by certain kinds of bacteria, 

 which develop, along with the lactic ferment, during souring, especially 

 in summer. As soon as it is noticed a sourer (pure) should be added, 

 preferably a pure culture of lactic ferment for souring the cream. Woody, 

 that is, spoiled by the boards of the kegs in which the butter is packed. 

 The woody flavour, which is somewhat distantly suggested by the peculiar 

 after -flavour of Koquefort cheese, is only developed if moulds grow on 

 the surface or in the inside of the butter. This defect is engendered by 

 packing the butter in casks made out of young damp wood inclined to be 

 musty, and also by not compressing the butter firmly enough into the 



