Hints on Butter-making
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the butter thoroughly.
Remove the butter to a marble slab.
Place a piece of ice on top of the butter to help wash out the buttermilk.
Fill a bowl with scalding water and let it sit for 10 minutes.
Rub the bowl with coarse salt.
Rinse the bowl.
Fill the bowl with cold or ice water to cool.
Transfer the washed butter to the bowl.
Pour out the cold water from the bowl.
Salt and pack
Gradually work in the pulverized salt, using the best quality dairy salt.
Use ½ ounce of salt per pound of butter for immediate use; use ¾ to 1 ounce for packing.
Cover the butter with a cotton cloth soaked in brine.
Let the butter sit at about 60°F for 12 hours.
Work the butter again to remove any remaining buttermilk thoroughly.
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
- Butter
- Forms the main body of the product; its buttermilk must be worked out to keep it firm and stable.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the butter and helps draw out residual buttermilk, while also aiding preservation for packing.
The step that matters
Work the butter to remove buttermilk. Buttermilk left in the butter can spoil and make it sour or cloudy, so it must be thoroughly worked out by washing and kneading before salting and packing.
“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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