Poor Man's Butter.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7298, 5 June 1895, Page 4

Poor Man's Butter.

The idea of eating margarine as a substitute for pure butter is not one which commends itself at the outset to most people. In the early days of its manu facture it used to be said, as a proof of the powers of science, that it could be made out of Thames mud. So much can be done by scientific chemistry that it would, no doubt, be possible to extract something resembling butter from such mud, but no one who has ever seen the banks of Father Thames afc low water would care to eat it. Such, however, is not the method by which Mr Otto Monsted, who recently opened a second large margarine factory in England, caters for the poor man's breakfast table. The article produced there consists of 60 per cent, of best beef fat, 20 per cent, of vegetable (nut) oil, and 20 per cent, of new milk, these ingredients being treated by what is known as the Danish process, and resulting in a substance which is not butter, certainly, but is a wholesome and nutritious substitute for it. The fresh new milk, of which 30,000 gallons are taken every week from the farmers in the neighborhood, is first placed in receiving tanks aud thence travels into " ripening " tanks, where it stays for sixteen or twenty hours. When sufficiently ripe it is pumped, together with the other ingredients, into the churns. The beef fat, from which the coarse part has been extracted, is melted down in hot vats, and when dissolved is sent along pipes to meet the milk, the oil going by another pipe and joining the other materials en routs. After being churned in steam-driven churns, the mixture is allowed to fall on to ice-cold water stored in huge cooling tanks underneath. These tanks are described as veritable little seas of ice ; on their surface the heated fat globules crystalise, and these crystals, when properly cooled, resemble the buttergranules so familiar to every dairymaid. They are then collected with long spade-like tools, placed on wooden waggons, and left to drain. When this is accomplished the margarine is sent on to huge kneading machines, where it is converted iuto a homogeneous mass, and at the same time salted to taste. Another set ot mills give it a further kneading, after which it 13 ready to be put up into rolls or pats for the market. At some period of its manufacture, the margarine receives its coloring, that intended for consumption for London needing to be of a rich daffodil hue, while for the North, country ifc must be of the palest primrose. During the whole process, from the time the raw materials leave their respective stores or tanks, until the finished article is ready for sale, no human hand touches the stuff, everything being done by machinery. Cleanliness is the guiding principle of the factory, which employs some 400 hands, all of whom have to don clean clothes every day. For this purpose a laundry forms part of the promises. Mr Monsted has another factory near Manchester, which for five years has turned out upwards of 100 tons of margarine each week, and still another at Aarhus, in Jutland, which has been in existeuce for more than a year. The retail cost of margarine is said to be from 6d to lOd per lb, and there appears to be money in its manufacture. Its increasing use will, however, prove a strong opponent of the colonial butter trade, and one which it is feared will have an injurious effect upon the prices realised for our produce in England. — Press.