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Food and Farming Page

Butter

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Butter is indispensable in almost all culinary preparations. Good fresh butter, used in moderation, is easily digested; it is softening, nutritious, and fattening, and is far more easily digested than any other of the oleaginous substances sometimes used in its place.

Tight, waxy, yellow Butter is better than white or crumbly, which soon becomes rancid and frowy. Go into the centre of balls or rolls to prove and judge it; if in firkin, the middle is to be prefered, as the sides are frequently distasted by the wood of the firkin--altho' oak and used for years. New pine tubs are ruinous to the butter. To have sweet butter in dog days, and thro' the vegetables seasons, send stone pots to honest, neat, and trusty dairy people, and procure it pac'k down in May, and let them be brought in in the night, or cool rainy morning, covered with a clean cloth wet in cold water, and partake of no heat from the horse, and set the pots in the coldest part of your cellar, or in the ice-house. Some say that May butter thus preserved will go into the winter use better than fall made butter.

Put a knife into the butter if salt, and smell it when drawn out; if there is any thing rancid or unpleasant, it is bad. Being made at different times, the layers in casks will vary greatly, and you will not easily come at the goodness but by unhooping the cask, and trying it between the staves. Fresh butter ought to smell like a nosegay, and be of an equal colour all through: if sour in smell it has not been sufficiently washed; if veiny and open, it is probably mixed with staler or an inferior sort