THE FIRST BUTTER

Hokitika Guardian, 9 January 1929, Page 8

THE FIRST BUTTER

AN ARAB DISCOVERV. Tin l av'eriij'e niiin is inclined to think that what he eats all the rest of the world is eating. He would he quite surprised to know, for instance, that a very small portion of the world is familiar with butter made from the milk of the'cow. The first luittor was made from the milk of the goat, reindeer. camel and vak, and a large part of the world has never seen butter of auv kind. Historically, cow’s butter, then, belongs to what might be called the modern history of the eating world.

The ancients churned the cream of goats by shaking it in sacks. Sometimes the sacks were siting like a hammock. The Armenian dairymaid still hangs her goatskin churn beneath a tripod and swings is back and forth by hand.

The Arabs who first discovered the golden lumps of butter in the camel’s milk which was hung in sacks across the backs of the animals for their desert journeys could not discover tor a Jong time just what motion produced the mystery. As soon as they did, they tried racing their fastest horses carrying the cream-tilled sacks, but it soon became evident that wearing out the horses was an expensive wily of producing the mysterious yellow lumps. Then the sacks were laid on the ground and beaten with sticks until the butter came.

In some countries even to-day mill; is placed in earthen jars and beaten with the hands until the butter “ comes.” Our dasher churn is based on this same principle of heating. It is interesting to learn some of ilie uses besides food uses to which butter was first devoted. For instance, the Arabs used it as cold cream, Reeling very beautiful with their butter-shining faces. There is a record of its having been use.d as a remedy for wounded elephants by the early Romans, who also used it as an ointment for the skin and hair. Not many years ago, in .Scotland and Northern England, butter was used for smearing sheep. In rural districts of Germany to-dav fresh unsalted butter is used as a cooling salve for burns. The Greeks believed that the soot of burned butter was unusually good lor sore eyes. Can you imagine being butterwealthy. or counting your wealth in golden butter bricks? Yet records show that in the Far East butter was stored in the ground and the wealth of the owner was reckoned by the quantity that he thus put away. Often a tree was planted over this butter storage place to mark the spot. This habit of storing butter in far-away and long ago days is repealed in more modern times in Ireland where butter packed in firkins was discovered buried in the bogs. In several countries in Asia butter is especially valued that is held over one hundred years. The flavour is considered ripened like cheese and it is used to enrich cooked foods. When butter first came to sail the seas is not exactly known, but iJ probably became an article of commerce between the continents as early as the first century when it was shipped from India to ports of the lied Sea. In tintwelfth century Germans sent- cargoes of wine to Norway and exchanged them if or cargoes of butter and dried fish, although the king of Norway finally stopned this exchange. Probably the making of butter was introduced all over Europe from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. No story of liow butter first “came”, is finishing without telling about the butter cows.” These have the lamily names of Guernsey and Jersey since they are more famous for the high proportion of butter fat found in mill, than any other breeds. These cows come from the islands that have the same names in the narrow English Channel between England and 1' ranee. The Island of Jersey is only eleven miles long and seven miles wide, while Guernsey is half as large and lias hall as many cows. Eor hundreds of yea is no cows have been imported to cither island so that the stock has remained pure. So strict are the laws in Jersey even that once a. cow lias left too island she can never come back, tt is interesting to realise that although there are never more than 15,000 Jersey cows at any one time on the Island of Jersey, still the Jersey descendants abroad number many hundreds of thousands. Of all tbe modern foods which "c have there are very few of them from to-day’s menus which could be found in the Bible. Butter, however, appears in the Scriptures on many occasions and as far back as tbe Hook ol Genesis, 18th chapter, Bth verse: “He. Abraham, took butter and milk and the calk which lie had dressed and set- ii before them.” Solomon refers to it in Proverbs: “Surely tbe churning of milk bringetli forth butter.” Histoiians tell us that tbe earliest quotations .Mi butter-making go back to 2JOJ B.C . !t is interesting to speculate bow long before that man was worshipping the cow merely as a sacred animal and not realising that from her milk could be made butter, tbe usual accompaniment of our daily bread.”