Fill your churn and butter stand with cold water over night. If summer time, and the weather should be very hot, rise about three or four in the morning, then skim any pans you may have ready, empty the water out of your churn and strain the cream through a clean cheese-cloth into it, till three parts full, not fuller, as if too full it would become frothy. Then gently turn your handle, lifting the lid of the churn occasionally, but oftener at first, to let out the gas, which would prevent the particles of cream from uniting into a solid mass, and occasion you much trouble by becoming frothy, when you might churn for days and perhaps never get butter at all. When you find the butter is collecting, turn the beaters slowly up and dash them suddenly down until it is in firm lumps and ready for your butter stand. Take them out, and place them in it, after having first emptied out the water and rubbed the bottom with salt and rinsed it. Strain the butter-milk through a clean cheese cloth into a pail, carefully putting the rest of the butter (if any) into the stand.

Wash it with fresh spring water, then work it with your boards and hands till all the milk is pressed out. Then shape it into pounds or pats as you may think proper, and mark it according to taste. Many pretty devices awe now sold for that purpose. Before shaping it, salt it, if required, and weigh it.

In Cambridgeshire butter is made into rolls a yard long, and passed through a ring of a certain diameter, for the convenience of dividing it without weighing. In some parts it is made into pints.

Having washed your large dishes with salt and water, you carefully place each pound or pat on a dish with your boards as you finish it, and put it on a shelf in the dairy. In summer it is dropped into a pail of cold water, and left till next morning before placing on the dish.

Next with cold water and best scrub-brush you carefully wash off every particle of milk from your churn, stand, milk-pans, cream-pots, and other utensils, and scald the moveable ones in the copper (be sure not to put enamelled ones in, or the heat will expand the outside and cause the enamel to crack); but those that are too large for that, pour boiling water into them, and let it stand in for a time; then take them out into the air and place them in the rack outside, and on the shelf and stool, till they are thoroughly sweet. Then replace them in the dairy as before.

During winter, about twenty minutes before using it pour boiling water into your churn to heat it, for if freezing it must be thoroughly warmed; but when the thermometer is above temperate, it will not require it. In very severe weather it may be necessary to churn before the kitchen fire. Churning should now be done quicker than in summer, and the butter should be shaped as soon as possible, or it will become so hard with the cold as to be difficult to work. After it is salted according to taste, weigh it and make it up at once.

Summer Temperature

In summer it is important to keep the dairy cool; therefore it is necessary to shut the windows and shutters during the excessive heat of the day, and to open them in the evening. Washing it down with cold spring water twice a day will freshen it and assist in preserving the milk sweet.

Whiter Temperature

In winter it is desirable to keep the dairy about temperate, therefore the windows may be kept partially, and in case of frost wholly closed; if very severe the shutters must also be shut.

Necessity Of Providing Butter For Winter Use

Butter has of late years been an expensive article of housekeeping, and as it still keeps up its high price, it would be as well, whilst cheap and plentiful during the spring and summer, to put some down for winter use. The following recipes will be found useful: -

Salting Butter

In salting butter the quality of the salt is of great importance. It should be of the best quality. Some persons use half an ounce of dry salt pounded fine, two drms. of sugar, and two drms. of saltpetre to every pound of butter. As a cask or large jar is filled up, every fresh quantity is carefully added to the preceding portion. Should it shrink away from the sides, melted butter may be poured round it to fill it up.

Without Salt

Butter may be preserved without salt, by melting it very gently, without boiling; which causes the watery particles to evaporate, and the curd, which is always present in small quantities, and is a principal cause of rancidity, to fall to the bottom. The clear butter is then poured into an earthen vessel, and covered with paper and a piece of bladder tied over, to exclude the air. Butter thus prepared loses some of its flavour, but is much superior to salt butter for ordinary purposes.

All butter that is produced in this country is consumed here, and a large quantity is imported from Ireland, Holland, and other countries.

The consumption of butter in London is estimated at 15,000 to 16,000 tons yearly.

Devonshire Cream

In Devonshire, instead of the ordinary mode of raising cream in shallow pans, it is put into a tin vessel as soon as it comes from the cow, and placed on a stove, to stand there for twelve hours, and then the stove is heated. This prevents the cream breaking, by being carried to it. The milk should be heated gradually until quite scalding, when a thick scum called "clotted cream" is thrown up, but it must not be allowed to boil. The lire should then be put out, and the cream allowed to stand twelve hours longer, when it may be skimmed. It may then be readily made into butter by beating it by hand in a bowl.

Another mode which is followed in parts of Holland, Scotland, and Ireland, is to churn the milk and cream together, by which it is said more butter is produced.