THE AMERICAN "BUTTER SECRET."

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXV, Issue 3752, 28 July 1869, Page 6

THE AMERICAN "BUTTER SECRET."

Amongst the foreign correspondence of the Agricultural Gazette, is the following, from Canada :— The object of the present communication ii to give you the earliest possible notice of a most dangerous agricultural fraud, which has juat made its appearance here ; it has coma from th« United States, where it has been mating a great stir ; it may be known in England, but I have seen no notice of it in any agricultural journal. Ife ii an adulteration of butter, and bo good (or bad) a one as to be likely to seriously to affect the trade in exported butter, but it cannot be stopped. It is call«d the " butttr secret," and has been patented. They will patent anything in Canada for the sake of the fees —a most disgraceful state of things—leaving the patentee to make good his patent if he can before the courts of law, and the public quite unprotected against the fraud of sales of such patent " rights," and by this means the ignorant and unwary suffer. In the present case tho parties introducing the so-called patent into Canada sold country rights to the amount of thousands of dollars before the matter wa> exploded. The plan is to take a pound of good fresh butter, a pint of milk, new and sweet, and the secret powder (several things will have the same effect); th«s© are churned or kneaded together, the butter takes up the whole of the milk, and the result ii a mass weighing over 21b. weight of ft substance so closely resembling fresh butter as to pass for it with those who are unsuspicious of suoh a fraud. The hotels and boarding-houses in New York.where fresh butter is 60 cents a pound, are using the discovery extensively. The mass of course requires immediate use, although in winter it has been kept for three weeks without okange ; yst American winters are so c»ld that anything, no matter how easily it may putrify naturally, will keep for very long periods. The thing is now thoroughly exposed in the papers, and I trust the public may be guarded against it. Whilst on this subject of butter, I may mention a few facts with respect to that product, which may be generally known in the dairy districts in England, but which certainly are not generally made known in agricultural journals ; and as what I say is the result of actual experience.it may prove useful ; at all events it may be relied on. The first is with respect to winter-made butter. We all know what a trouble this ia, and how unreliable as to flavour, beside the everlasting labour of churning when the butter will not come. All this may be avoided by properly scalding the milk, and then churning the scalded cream, Th» way we discovered it was this. We had an English servant, a Devonshire woman, who often asked us why we did not scald the milk. She had heard of it, but did not know how to do it ; but she said the rule she had heard was that the milk should be set on the stove until the size of the bottom of the pan was seen as a ring on the surface. As we nad been greatly troubled with the usual results of winter churning, we tried it, but failed a number of times. We finally succeeded, however, and the following is the result after some fifty trials. Set the milk when fresh milked in a place whir© the thermometer will stand at from 60 degrees to 62 degrees ; let it stand 24 hours; don't have the milk more than 2| inches deep ; the cream will rise well ; then more th« pan carefully to the stove (we all use stoves in our kitohens in Canada), and let it heat until the thermometer shovr3 180 degrees, or until the first smell of boiled milk appears. If you can keep it at this heat from half an hour to an hour so much the better, though less time will do ; then move the pans back to the place they came from, and let them stand at least 12 hours until the cream is cold and solid ; it will then come off in a single cake (so to speak) and leave the milk without adhering to it at all ; the result is cream ready to make butter, and it may be made in large or umall quantities. If in large quantities, no doubt gome kind of churn would be necessary, but, as we made butter every lecond day, we used a large wooden bowl. In this bowl the cream is stirred with the hand all one way for a few minutes— generally under ten minutes— and the butter comts at once. If it ia a poor colour, the true grass tint may be given by grating a carrot, putting the grated pulp into muslin, and squeezing it with and amongst the scalded cream until the right colour is obtained. The colour adheres to the butter, leaving the butter-milk pur© and white. This is a most extraordinary fact, and we never could account for it. The great point to b» attained is the right heat. If the milk is not heated hot enough the butter will be bitter, aad will leave a sort of sting on the palate. If it is too hot it will be very good, but will be full of white flakes and will be less in quantity than it ought to be ; bit if the milk is oi the right heat, so as just to develop the smell of boiled milk (or at 180 deg.j, the result will be a pure hard butter, not of the fine summer flavour, but never bad, or such as can be found fault with by the most fastidious ; it keeps well aa fresh butter, but it was always too scare© to make salt butter of. Of course a proper quantity of salt was used in the uimal way. We were always very careful that the milk should be good, and that if any of the cows were out of order their milk was not mixed with the rest. W© sold this butter, wo always got the very highest price that was going, and customers who once took it always wanted it again. We used tin pans, and would recommend those that are stamped and not soldered. , The resulting butter-milk was very sweet and good, and was used by those who liked that article. The skimmed milk was nearly as pleasant to vie ai new fresh milk, but ol course was poor from the absence of cream. It was in great demand by the poor families m the neighbourhood, and is infinitely superior to ordinary skimmed-milk. m In f««ding our cows m winter, we give them a proportion of ground peas, also bean, and distillery slop, besides hay ; and we always found that th© quantity of butter was m proportion to the grain used— the more gram the mtre butter.

There ii * itory told of Lonia Philippe, who, sea* mc a iervanfc b«nt on plunder, §aid, "My good friend, if tou doa't tftice c»w, th»t fat o»poain your pooktt nIU fiOl out, wid ipoil the Qaeea'fl dress."