KEEPING BUTTER.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 48, 3 May 1884, Page 7

KEEPING BUTTER.

Special interest in the proper place for keeping butter is manifested by at least three classes. First, the producer, who oft°n desires to retain the butter product of a day or week until additional qmiiitities are made, or until some favourable change in the mirket shall render its sale more remunerative. Second, the town or city dealer, who buys a choice article of butter, and who desires to keep it in stock an indefinite period. Third, the consumers, who purchase in lots for a month' 3 or three months' consumption, or who, at least, do not wish to be obliged to purchase from week to week in small quantities. Each of these classes (says a contributor to the Albany N.Y. Cultivator) have experienced loss and disappointment through rancid butter. Such a result comes with the greatest annoyance to the consumer, who, day after day, notices the constantly increasing rancidity of his little stock of butter, and who forces his unwilling stomach to digest food seasoned with such a product, offending both his sense of smell and taste, however thinly he may cover his slice of bread with such a noxious compound. At last he is inclined to denounce the producer as a swindler, accusing him of packing vile material in the bottom of the tub, and topping it off with a choice article of butter. Finally the remnant 0* rancid butter is abandoned to the tub of soap grease, its proper place. Many suggestions are read from time to time as to the proper place for "keeping butter Sweet for many a long day." A clear, cool cellar is suggested — an ice-chest or cold storage. In theory, so far as a low temperature tends to retard decomposition, these suggestions all tend in the right direction The eminently proper place however, and one Which is in the reach of all, is to keep the butter in brine. By placing the prints or balls of butler in a tub or other, vessel nearly filled with brine or by pouring brine into the tubs nearly filled with butter, the air is excluded while tiie salted water is unfavourable to the germs of fermentation or to the process of decomposition. The great bulk of the butter product reaches the dealer packed in tubs. At the first sale the whole package is weighed, then the tub is inverted on a draining board, the butter taken out, the package lifted, and the tub and cover weighed, to learn the tare and net weight, which is finally marked with the gross weight upon the package. -Seldom does the dealer return the brine to the tub, hence the air immediately surrounds the butter, and it commences to spoil. When a consumer buys a tub of butter, the consumption of which in his family may require weeks, he should at once prepare a strong brine of clean salt .and pure water, tilling his tub of butter with the same. The use of a \veii?!it is necessary, otherwise the butter will float in the tub. The consumer who buys balls or prints of butter for future use should secure a stone jar with a supply of brine, in order to secure perfect preservation. With this precaution taken, a cool place of storage is, of course, far ■superior to a wnnu one. Our highest practical authorities in matters connected with the dairy all agree in the use of brine as a certain means of keeping butter sweet and pure. Lard is kept without the use of salt, because in rendering the high degree of heat maintained in the process destroys the germs of fermentation. Lard is generally more carefully packed fchnn butter. Cream is exposed, as it rises on the milk, to the action of the atmosphere, and al. its faults follow it, and are churned together.

Last year England consumed 810,808,080, or two 'and a quarter million of eggs per day. All the women of the villages ,bn tlip flliore of thit Gulf of Af^xi'-o are in the I»«liit ot' swiii. i»iii£. lh« Noung Jadich a<"e all ditiug-beiit:^