ABC Butter Making: A Hand-Book for the Beginner — 1888
Originally published in 1888 by F. S. Burch, editor of The Dairy World, ABC Butter Making is a practical handbook for anyone wanting to understand the traditional art and business of making good butter. Rather than focusing only on churning, the book follows the entire process from the cow to the finished package.
The book begins with milking, explaining how cleanliness, regular milking, gentle handling, and proper equipment affect the quality and quantity of milk. It discusses preparing the udder, avoiding unnecessary disturbance during milking, the proper use of milking tubes, and the importance of a suitable milk pail.
From there, Burch explains the care of fresh milk, with particular attention to removing animal heat quickly and preventing milk from absorbing odors. The book describes deep-setting cans, cold water, ice, and other methods used to encourage the cream to separate efficiently. It also explains when the cream should be skimmed and why allowing milk to stand too long can affect its flavor and quality.
A substantial section is devoted to the milk room and management of cream. The author discusses ventilation, temperature control, cleanliness, stirring cream, ripening cream, straining it, and handling cream during winter. The book gives specific temperatures for ripening and churning and emphasizes learning to judge conditions accurately rather than relying on guesswork.
The book also covers butter color, including the use of natural color from carrots and annatto and the commercial butter colors available in the 1880s. Burch explains why color varied naturally between different cows and cautions beginners against using too much coloring.
The heart of the handbook is its detailed discussion of churning. It explains cream temperature, churning speed, how long churning should take, starting the churn slowly, recognizing the point at which the cream has broken into butter, draining the buttermilk, washing the butter while it remains granular, and using cold water and brine. Several types of churns are illustrated, including barrel, rectangular, and pendulum designs.
Next comes working the butter, where the author explains how to remove remaining buttermilk, incorporate salt, avoid both underworking and overworking, and maintain the proper temperature. The book includes instructions for using butter workers and a butter-salting scale, along with illustrations of several types of butter-working equipment.
The handbook then moves beyond butter making itself to discuss marketing butter. Burch compares the way many farmers handled their butter with the practices he believed produced better prices. He discusses finding local customers, selling fresh butter, dealing with city customers, and using a commission merchant when necessary. He also recommends sending a sample to a reliable butter buyer for an evaluation when a maker wants to identify weaknesses in the finished product.
Packing and shipping receive their own chapter. The book discusses wooden tubs, bale boxes, earthen containers, tin packages, parchment paper, print butter, butter molds, package sizes, preventing “woody taste,” keeping air away from the butter, maintaining uniform color, and keeping packed butter cold.
A separate chapter explains the importance of thermometers in the dairy. Burch argues that accurate temperature measurement is essential when cooling milk, ripening cream, churning, and handling butter. The book even includes an illustration of a glass dairy thermometer designed to float in milk or cream.
The short chapter of “Maxims for ABC Butter Makers” distills many of the book’s lessons into practical rules concerning cows, cream, temperature, cleanliness, churning, working butter, salt, record keeping, and attention to detail. One of the book’s recurring themes is that good butter comes from consistently managing many small details rather than relying on equipment alone.
Finally, the book includes “How to Make Good Butter,” a chapter by N. Bigalow of Stowe, Vermont. Bigalow describes his own dairy practices, including cow selection and feeding, cleanliness, cream raising, temperatures, churning, washing butter, salting, working, printing, and packaging. His account provides a useful example of how an experienced butter maker of the period actually put many of the principles discussed earlier in the book into practice.
The original book is also richly illustrated, with period illustrations of cows, milking equipment, deep-setting cans, skimmers, churns, butter workers, salting scales, butter tubs, printers, molds, and dairy thermometers.
