196 BACTERIA IN BUTTER AND OLEOMARGARINE 
ripening has become more and more apparent with each step to- 
ward the concentration of butter-making. The farmer may, per- 
haps, allow his cream to care for itself, since his product is so small. 
But such a plan would ruin a creamery where there are thousands 
of pounds of butter made each day. Only as the ripening can be 
controlled, is concentration of butter-making successful. 
The Purposes of Cream-ripening.—These are as follows: 
(1) Ripening the cream makes it churn more easily and increases 
the yield of butter. This is true, at all events, for gravity cream; 
it is less significant, and perhaps not true, for separator cream. 
(2) Butter made from properly ripened cream is thought to keep 
better. (3) By far the most important purpose in cream-ripening 
is the production in the butter of a desirable flavor and aroma. 
Butter made from unripened cream lacks the peculiar flavor of 
high-grade butter, since this is the result of the ripening. If the 
ripening is not satisfactory, the flavor and aroma of the butter are 
sure to be inferior. 
The importance of this factor in butter-making for our creamer- 
ies is very great. The market price of butter depends largely upon 
the flavor. Butter without flavor or with bad flavor brings a 
price in the market which hardly pays for the making, while a 
product with a good flavor and aroma will sell for at least three or 
four cents more a pound; and the exceptionally fine-flavored 
product of special creameries brings a fancy price—two or three 
times that of poor butter. The flavor will frequently add one- 
third or one-half to the price which could be obtained for poorly 
flavored butter or for butter without flavor. Hence, the success 
or failure of a creamery business depends, in large measure, upon 
the ripening. A creamery which fails to ripen its cream properly 
fails to obtain a desirable flavor. Hence, it obtains a lower price 
for its butter and may hardly meet expenses; while a neighboring 
creamery, that is more successful in its cream-ripening, obtains a 
good product and, consequently, a price for its butter which makes 
the business a financial success. This matter is of more signifi- 
