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To Make Butter

Butter is made by churning cream from milk that has settled in pans, then washing, salting, and shaping the butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,426 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pans and milk

  1. Scald the milk pans every day after washing them, and let them set till the water gets cold.

  2. Wipe the pans with a clean cloth.

  3. Fill the pans with cold water half an hour before milking time, and do not pour it out until just before use.

  4. Strain the milk into broad, shallow pans and place them in the spring-house, setting them down in the water.

Make the cream and butter

  1. After the milk has stood twenty-four hours, skim off the cream into a large deep earthen crock.

  2. Keep the crock closely covered and stir the cream with a stick at least twice a day, and whenever you add fresh cream.

  3. Churn at least twice a week, adding the strippings of the milk to the cream.

  4. Rinse and cool the churn with cold water, and keep it very clean.

  5. Strain the cream from the crock into the churn, put on the lid, and move the handle slowly in warm weather.

  6. Stop churning when the handle moves heavily and the butter has gathered into a lump.

  7. Take the butter out with a wooden ladle into a small tub or pail, and press it to remove all the milk.

  8. Add a little salt and squeeze and work the butter for a long time.

  9. Set the butter in a cool place for three hours, then work it again.

Shape and store

  1. Wash the butter in cold water, weigh it, and make it up into separate pounds.

  2. Shape each pound on a wooden butter print dipped in cold water.

  3. Spread a clean linen cloth on a bench in the spring-house, place the butter on it, and let it set until perfectly hard.

  4. Wrap each pound in a separate piece of linen dipped in cold water.

  5. Pour the buttermilk into a clean crock, cover it, and keep it in the spring-house with a saucer to dip it out with.

  6. Wash and scald the churn before putting it away, and keep it filled with cold water for an hour or more before the next use.

  7. To preserve butter, pack it tightly into a large jar and cover it with a strong brine of fine salt dissolved in water, about two inches above the butter.

  8. Keep the jar closely covered and set it in a cool place.

  9. When you want butter, take it evenly from the top so the brine keeps covering the rest at a regular depth.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the butterfat that separates out as cream and then churns into butter.
Cream (in the method)
Its fat globules gather together when churned, forming the butter.
Salt
Adds flavor and helps draw out remaining milk when worked into the butter.

The step that matters

Stop churning when the butter gathers into a lump. Churning past the point of separation can break the butter into small grains and make it greasy, while stopping early leaves cream unseparated. Pressing out the milk thoroughly afterward matters because leftover buttermilk spoils and shortens storage life.

“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.