COLOUR IN BUTTER

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6918, 25 May 1929, Page 4 (Supplement)

COLOUR IN BUTTER

FIXING A STANDARD Flavour is the paramount feature in good butter or cheese, but the fact that the .judges at dairy shows usually award five per cent of the marks for colour is an admission that colour is important. The great success of Danish butte: in the markets of the world (says tho Grocer) is due in a great measure to the uniformity of colour in their butter, but up to the present even the Danes, with all their thoroughness,

wore without a fixed standard, and much confusion had been caused from time to time between butter merchants and their clients with regard to the choice of colours. Up to quite recently there has been no method of describing accurately the exact shade or tint desired, and any attempt to do so has always been more or less “by rule of thumb." Now, however, an ingenious device has been [nit, on the market which solves these difficulties. Hansen's butter colour scale, as it. is called, consists of a neat little booklet of eight pages, and each page is numbered and coloured a distinct shade. When a grocer wishes to order butter of a certain colour, he

simply mentions the number, page 1 or 2. as the case may be, then the creamery manager or butter merchant, who may be in Denmark, Ireland or New Zealand for that matter, when dispatching the order, takes his butter scale and selects butter of the exact colour ordered. Hitherto it was the custom for the grocers when ordering butter to specify “not so pale" or “not so high-col-oured as last consignment." It is obvious that the wholesaler could not ■ have a very clear recollection of tho exact tint of a consignment dispatched perhaps weeks or months previously. There arc several reasons for vari.v ' tions in the colour of butter, the chief : causes being feeding, breed of cattle

or the period of lactation. Tlic colours in the booklet arc guaranteed to be uniform and permanent, ns numerous experiments wore carried out for two years before really satisfactory results wore secured. The price, which is only 1/3, post free, is merely nominal, considering its usefulness, and it may be had from Messrs Sbas. Hansen’s Laboratory, Astor House, Aldwyck, London, W.C.