Milk and Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the milk
Scald and air milk vessels before use.
In warm weather, keep sweet milk on ice or in a spring-house.
Set aside one pan of milk to raise cream for coffee.
Fill a bucket with a close-fitting lid with milk for each meal and cooking.
Churn
Strain unskimmed milk into a scalded churn for daily churning.
Churn milk at blood heat; avoid overheating to prevent white, frothy butter.
Churn early in the morning during summer for firmer butter.
Clean the churn immediately after use.
Shape and store
Print butter early in the morning while cool.
Store butter in the refrigerator, separated from other foods.
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
- Unskimmed milk
- Its butterfat clumps together into butter when the milk is churned.
The step that matters
Churn at blood heat, not hotter. Overheated cream makes the butterfat soft and unable to gather into firm grains, so the butter turns white and frothy. Cool milk churns more slowly but gives firmer, cleaner butter.
“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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