PRESERVING BUTTER.

Woodville Examiner, Volume 3, Issue 281, 7 September 1886, Page 3

PRESERVING BUTTER.

One of the chief obstae’es to the preservation of butter is the water which it contains, and it can be shown by almost any analyst that an ordinary sample of good butter has in it a much larger proportion of this element than it ought to have. Everyone knows that water promotes decomposition through the medium of the oxygen and hydrogefi it contains, and this results in the rancid taste which is so objectionable. Butter, which has been absolutely dried—which, in fact, lias had the whole of the water climated from it—can be kept equally as well as lard if it be prepared in the same way, bm its flavour is not so delicious, although it is perfectly sweet. In the ordinary way water cannot bo extracted from the butter, and, therefore, if it is intended to keep it it must bo salted, and in order to keep it a long period there is no plan equal to that of brining it when it is in its granular form, so that the salt permeates almost every particle ; thus there is a complete intermixture, deconqrosition is checked, and the flavour is developed. It is quite common for the consumers to ask a but-ter-dealer for mild butter. In otherwords, they want a sample which lias been property salted, but flavour maintained, and in which the development of that disagreeable taste which is consequent upon deconqrosition is not to be found. Sale has another effect, in adding firmness and improving the texture of butter, for it will be readily seen that as the jiarticles in a mass dissolve they attract the water which the butter contains, and thus make it drier than it was before the salt was added. Professor Stewart, who has made a number of experiments in salting butter, says that he can recommend pure white finely puherised sugar which has been mixed with three times its weight of fine salt, loz of the mixture being used for every 11b of butter. This improves both the flavour and the keeping quality if the salt and sugar arc completely dissolved. We endorse the professor’s opinion that tire best salt for use in a butter-making dairy should be as fine as flour, and that then, indeed, it should be sifted in order to abstract all the objectionable grains and foreign matters which it may contain.— The Garden.