Butter is either fresh, potted, or salt. The potted butters are the Dorset, Welsh, and Ostend, and are slightly salted. The salt butter is coarse looking, but will keep a long time. The mode of making butter will be found in the article entitled "The Dairy." Butter has been frightfully expensive in London of late years; the best cannot be bought under 1s. per pound. This rate has caused great adulteration in the article, of which the most frightful stories are told: the suet or fat of dead dogs melted down with oils and chemically prepared, is said to be sent to Holland, and from thence imported back as Dutch butter: nay, by a chemical preparation, the slimy sewage of the Thames is said to be convertible into butter. It is wise, therefore, for the housewife to have her butter sent up from a dairy she knows, if possible; if not, she should buy it at a first-class shop and give a good price for it.

Butter should be kept in a terracotta stand; in hot weather ice is required to keep it firm and sweet. Those who are unable to procure ice may refrigerate it by placing the bowl which holds it in a basin of saltpetre and water; cover the bowl over, lay on and round it a clean cloth with its ends in the saltpetre water, which by capillary attraction will keep it wet all over. Stand it in a cool, dark place, for light and heat are inseparable.

How To Sweeten Rancid Butter

If butter which has become rancid be washed with new milk, and afterwards with water, it will become as good as ever. The rancid flavour of butter that has been long exposed to the air is due to what the chemists call butyric acid, which, being soluble in milk, accounts for that fluid removing the bad taste of rancid butter. The water with which the butter is afterwards rinsed is used to take away any of the superfluous milk which, if left on the butter, would become sour. The manner of " washing" butter, or any other greasy substance, is to knead it in the cold fluid after the fashion of kneading dough.

Thick sour milk taken from the pan carefully with a skimmer without breaking, may be eaten with sugar and nutmeg over it. It is both cooling and palatable.

Buttermilk is used sometimes to make pot-cheese or cottage-cheese.