COLOURING BUTTER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 147, 14 December 1877, Page 5 (Supplement)

COLOURING BUTTER.

An experienced dairyman gives in the Ohio Farmer the following rules for colouring butter:— No. 1. Four ounces of lump annatto, one-half gallon water ; mix and stir one day or until dissolved. No. 2. Four ounces of carbonate of potash, two ounces sal soda, three pints

water ; mix and Btir one day, or until dissolved. Mix No. 1 and 2 together. If the cream is taken from deep cans, use two tablespoonfuls to four of cream. If the cream is taken shallow pans, use one tablespoonftd to four gallons of cream, in Winter. In Spring and Fall use less. Cut the annatto in small pieces, so as it will dissolve easily. Having tempered the cream and added the colouring matter, let the churn work only moderately fast. When the butter has formed in little pellets about the size of duck shot, draw off all the buttermilk. Do not be afraid of the butter coming out of the churn. What little escapes can easily be skimmed off the butter-milk and put back into the churn. Get a pail of clean water and bring it to the temperature of 50 deg. Take the dash out of* the churn and pour this water from as high as you can hold it down on these pellets of butter. Stir the butter up thoroughly with a paddle. Draw off this water and pour another pailful on the butter. Stir it up and take tlie butter out and put it on the butter-worker. •An incline table with a lover running across it is good enough. After this severe bath the butter will need but little working. Let all the working be done simply by -pressure. Do not slide a paddle over the butter. Having got the buttermilk all out, press the butter into a thin sheet and sprinkle one-sixth of the salt on it. Repeat this until all the salt is worked in. Butter should never be salted stronger than onehalf an ounce to the pound.