ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN S ASSOCIATION. 79 



ladle or paddle. He was on the right track. But he used to set his butter 

 away and afterward give it a "second working," as it is called. In this, I 

 think, he was wrong. I should not be surprised if he is now omitting this sec- 

 ond operation. Most of the leading dairymen of the West are omitting the 

 "second working," and packing their butter directly into the tub, thus saving 

 labor, avoiding injury to what is called the " grain" of the butter, and saving 

 salt by retaining in the butter all that is put in. With either a first or second 

 working, it is possible to work out a large amount of the brine, thus leaving 

 the butter too fresh, unless an extra amount of salt is put in. 



To avoid this waste, some dairymen, supposing the salt must be "worked 

 in," have resorted to coarse-grained salt, after the manner of the cheese makers 

 who salt their curd before the surplus whey is drained out. In this the butter 

 makers make a very great mistake, in two particulars. First, in working their 

 butter with undissolved salt in it, they do great injury to the texture, which is 

 also an injury to the flavor and to the keeping quality of the butter. So far as 

 the texture is concerned, they might as well work in so much sand. The un- 

 dissolved salt scours the butter and cuts the "grain," giving the butter a 

 greasy, shiny appearance which is as offensive to [the experienced eye as the 

 loss of flavor is to the educated palate. It appears to liberate the fine flavoring 

 oils, which unite with the oxygen or other elementsof the atmosphere, form- 

 ing unpalatable compounds, or else they become the nidus of some of the 

 numerous varieties of microscopic spores that always float in the atmosphere, 

 these developing into minute organisms that are unsavory. But whatever the 

 process that follows, I believe there is no divided opinion as to the overworking 

 causing injury to butter. 



The second point of injury arising from using coarse salt is the leaving of 

 undissolved salt in the butter to make it gritty. The harder the salt is the 

 worse. Unless a good deal of water is left in the butter and the butter is 

 allowed to stand a good while and is worked a good deal, to bring the grains of 

 salt in contact with the water, it is impossible to not have gritty butter where 

 salt that is coarse or hard, or both, is used. All ground salts, and those 

 made very dry by exposure to a high temperature— that is, have the water of 

 crystalization expelled— are objectionable on this account. They dissolve too 

 slowly, and the sharp angles of the crystals made by grinding cut the "grain" 

 of the butter very rapidly. 



I am led to these remarks by my past season's observations at the fairs of 

 the West and Northwest. It was a universal complaint among the judges that 

 the butter was overworked. On inquiry, I found that Western butter-makers 

 were quite in the habit of using coarse salt, under the mistaken notion, which 

 had been instilled into their minds by salt agents, that fine salt which dissolved 

 freely would incur waste— and, with their idea of "working in" the salt in an 

 undissolved state, there was some force to this argument. But the best butter 

 that I saw anywhere was that of Mr. Leslie, of Springfield, Minnesota, which 

 won the Higgin prize silver pitcher. This butter was pronounced by the judges 

 the best butter on exhibition at the Minnesota State Fair. It was declared per- 

 fect in texture, and scored 19 out of a possible 20 points on flavor— the chair- 

 man remarking, "We must be careful how we mark anything perfect." This 

 butter was, of course, salted with Higgin's "Eureka" salt. The salting was 



