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Butter, Philadelphia

A method for making butter by churning cream and adding salt, then shaping and storing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Butter, Philadelphia

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Set pans of milk in flowing water at 58°F (14°C) for 24 hours.

  2. Skim the milk and place the cream in deep vessels (12-gallon capacity).

  3. Keep the cream at 58°F to 59°F until it tastes slightly acidic.

Churn and wash

  1. Churn the cream for about 1 hour until buttermilk is drawn off.

  2. Add cold water to the churn and give a few turns, then draw off the water.

  3. Repeat until the water is nearly free from milkiness.

Salt and store

  1. Work the butter with a damp cloth to absorb moisture and buttermilk.

  2. Salt the butter with 1 ounce of salt for every 3 pounds and mix thoroughly.

  3. Weigh the butter and shape it into pound prints.

  4. Place the prints in large tin trays and set in water to harden overnight.

  5. Wrap the butter in damp cloths and store in tin-lined cedar tubs with ice.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Its cream separates and ripens, becoming slightly acidic, which gives the butter its flavor.
Cream (in the method)
Its fat clumps together during churning to form the butter.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the butter and helps preserve it after the moisture is worked out.

The step that matters

Churn the cream for about 1 hour until buttermilk is drawn off. Churning must continue until the fat clumps and the buttermilk separates. Leftover buttermilk left in the butter can turn it sour and shorten its keeping quality, so the washing and working steps matter.

“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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