PURIFYING RANCID BUTTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 1476, 28 February 1880, Page 6

PURIFYING RANCID BUTTER.

Calvin Peck some ten years ago obtained a patent for restoring and preserving batter. His invention relates to a new process for purifying butter, having especial reference to arresting fermentation and restoring rancid butter! His prociss consists in melting the butter in a olean vessel under a slow and regular heat, and while it is melting he adds 2oz of pulverised plum to every 51b of butter, the bufcier being stirred gently while melting. When thoroughly melted it is strained through a fine strainer into clean cold water. The butter will rise to the surface quite pure and transparent. The alum coagulates the albumen, the casein, and other foreign matter, all of which are retained in the strainer, leaving the butter perfectly pare and olean, and of uniform consistency. When the butter is sufficiently cool to be in good working order, it is carefully taken out and thoroughly worked, adding to each slb of butter 3oz good dairy salt, loz clean saltpetre, and loz pulverised white sugar. The butter is thenpaoked in clean vesselß, and i 8 fit for use. By covering it with strong brine and keeping it in a 000 l place, it is claimed it will remain sweet for any desired length, o jj time,

Apropos to the above a correspondent in Land and Water answers an inquirer in its columns who wants to know how to sweeten rancid butter, as follows : If her butter is very bad, premises the writer, I cannot promise that the following plan will entirely restore it ; but I can at least describe a process which I once watched at an agricultural show, where a machine for washing butter was at work, and where some very horribly odorous butter was in a few minutes rendered edible. It did its work very quickly, and by the simple turning of a handle, and the same sort of process might be accomplished by means of a wire sieve or a strainer anywhere. The butter was forced through a finely perforated receptacle into a large tub of fresh cold water. _ It came rapidly raining down in a fine capilliform shower, lying upon the clear water in a tangle of golden filament, singularly beautiful, till the water was all covered wilh them. Whon the whole lutnp had been thus transformed into yellow threads, they were stirred aud beaten about in the water with a wooden beater; then collected and pressed iuto a fresh lump of greatly improved appearance, and again forced through the machine in another shower of delicate filaments. This proc j ss was repeated several timof, till the butter had been washed literally through and through.