WATER IN SALTED BUTTER.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 240, 4 February 1888, Page 8

WATER IN SALTED BUTTER.

While salt will readily dissolve at fifty degrees, says a writer, it is not so easy to get the butter free from the surplus water, and it is by this needless" water that much injury is done to butter. Fifty-five degree* would be better, and salt the butter at sixty degrees. Water is a great solvent of casein and sugar— traces of which will be found in all butter, however well worked — but the more water remaining after working over the greater the chemical action and acting upon the minute particles- of curd or cheese, it becomes rancid by welt-known chemical action. Butter should wot contain more water than ia necessary to dissolve what salt it will retain in the form of brine, and fourteen per cent, seems to be about the amount. More water than this dilutes the brine, and defeats by so much the object of the use of salt in butter— to preserve the casein from chemical change— nor can this be accomplished save in a temperature below fifty degrees. In the usual creamery butter, and all that madfr by cold setting, the maker often unintentionally leaves more than twenty per cent, of water in the butter, notwithstanding that* butter made from cream slightly aoid, re* tains more moisture than that made from sourer cream. The souring breaks ,up the texture of the cream; and the butterseparates better from the buttermilk* Then all the butter-maker needs to do is to churn the ripened cream at a lower temperaturethanis needed for sour, to use salt etch time in washing it .free from butter l- | milk, and when the regulation amount, of salt is used to season the buttev let •it dissolve, and then by gently working and packing, know that the butter ifr free from any excess of .water above four- ! teen per cent. • Then if kept below fifty •degree's and away from the influences of the air, butter made from soured milk fmufet keep wall* fr . 1;,,,,^ .