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Dessert

Butter

A homemade butter made by churning sour cream and washing to remove whey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Collect cream in a covered jar until you have enough.

  2. Allow the cream to sour by keeping it for a while.

  3. Churn the sour cream until butter forms.

  4. Remove the butter from the churn and wash it in water while kneading to remove whey.

  5. Add salt if making salted butter immediately after washing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Cream
Churning agitates the cream's fat until it clumps into butter, and souring adds flavour.

The step that matters

Wash the butter while kneading. Whey left in the butter contains milk solids and water that spoil quickly and reduce keeping quality. Thorough washing and kneading press out the liquid so the butter keeps better.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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