PRESERVING BUTTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2221, 2 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

PRESERVING BUTTER.

One of the chief obstacles 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 hydrogen it contains, and this result is the rancid taste which is so objectionable. Butter which has been absolutely dried — which, in fact, has had the whole of the water eliminated from it — can be kept equally as well as lard if it be prepared in the same way, but its flavour is not so delicious, although it is perfectly sweet. In the ordinary way water cannot be extracted from butter, and, therefore, if it is intended to keep it must be salted, and in order to keep a long period there is no plan equal to that of bnniug it when it is in its granular form, so that the salt permeates almost every particle ; thus there is a complete intermixture, decomposition is checked, and the flavour is developed. It is quite common for the consuming public to ask a butter dealer for mild butter. In other words, they want a sample which has beeu properly salted, but flavour maintained, and in which the development of that disagreeable taste which is consequent upon decomposition is not to bo found. Salt has another effect, in adding firmness and improving the texture of butter, for it will be readily seen that as the particles 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 pulverised sugar which had beeu mixed with three times its weight of fine ?alt, 1 oz. of the mixture being used for every 1 lb. of butter. This improves both the flavor and the keeping quality if the salt and the sugar are completely dissolved. We endorse the professor's opinion that the 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 Grocer.

Must Draw the Line Somewhere. — The organ-blower in a London church fell asleep during the service, of which fact the audience soon became conscious by his vigorous blowing of his own organ. The Rev. Arthur Hall, the preacher, after bearing it for a while, stopped and remarked : "I do not object to a quiet nap on a hot day, and am flattered at being able to contribute to anybody's repose ; but, while proud at being able to give the beloved sleep, I wish it to be distinctly understood that I draw the line at snores. There is a man snoring in the congregation, and I shall be obliged if somebody will waken him." The offender was quickly roused. Henry Matthews, Q.C., who was so pitiless in stoning Sir Chas. Dilke for his sins, was himself co-respondent in a celebrated divorce suit twenty-two years ago. This was^the Chetwynd case, and it caused almost as much scandal at the time as the Dilke-Crawford trial has recently done. Mrs Chetwynd was the wife of Sir George Chetwynd and the granddaughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, The Henry Matthews who was "her guilty idol and god," has just become Home Secretary in the new Tory Cabinet. The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, who is suspected of being the author of an anonymous circular urging the natives in the Punjaub to raise against the English, is a son of the famous Runjeet Singh, the Rajah of the Punjaub, and was born in 1838. Dhuleep was an infant when his father died, and the demoralised state of the regency induced the British Ministry to annex the principality under certain conditions ; one being that the young Maharajah should receive four lacs of rupees, equivalent to £40,000 sterling per annum. Afterwards the Maharajah became a Christian, took up his abode in England, and was naturalised. His mother, the notorious Ranee, also resided in England until her death, in 1863, but resisted steadfastly all persuasion to become a convert to Christianity. It was at one time supposed that the Maharajah would take for a wife the Princess Victoria of Coorg; but in 1564 he was married at the British Consolate at Alexandria to a young Protestant lady, a British subject. Some time ago the Maharajah became involved in finnncial difficulties and sold his estate near Thetford. Ridicule is a terrible power. It has killed Mr Holloway's prospects of a baronetage (writes the London correspondent of the "Sydney Morning Herald.") The trust of the late " professor " has been carried out magnificently. The colleges and sanatorium built with much of the large fortune of the deceased pill- maker are amonp our finest buildings and not the least of our benevolent institutions. The Queen has inaugurated them, and Mr Holloway was led by the press and his immediate circle of friends to expect certain royal honours, besides thoße of the Queenly presence at Egham. But journalistic scribblers and gossips have christened his college " The Pillories," and for the present M. Holloway must be content to be plain "mister," unless he chooses to dub himself " professor " as the original author of " the world-famed pills and ointment" did.