Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/807

Rh DAIRY 771 water, or horse-power. Forty strokes of the piston per minute has been found a good rate of working, but, accord ing to a report on American butter factories, the best rate is fifty strokes per minute. The most suitable dasher for the barrel churn is either circular or cross-shaped with broad wings, and should have a diameter equal to about three- fourths of that of the central portion of the churn. The speed of working is kept slow until the cream is thoroughly mixed ; it may then be increased to the normal rate. &quot;When the butter begins to come, the speed, if rapid, should be slackened. The residual buttermilk is removed from the butter by kneading either with or without water. The water should be entirely free from sediment, and not very hard. Generally brine is preferable to water alone for washing. The method of churning introduced into America by Mr John Higgins of Speedsville, New York, consists in adding cold water twice or thrice at short intervals to the contents of the churn, so as to lower the temperature to about 55 Fahr. The dasher, which now does not rise above the surface of the cream, is worked at half speed, and the butter is produced quite pure, in large-sized, hard, and compact granules ; the adherent buttermilk can be readily separated by rinsing a couple of times in water, and the butter is then ready for salting. Clotted Cream. In Devonshire a method of treating the milk has long been in use for the production of what is called clotted or &quot;clouted &quot; cream. The new milk is strained into shallow earthenware pans, in each of which half a pint of water has previously been placed to prevent the milk from adhering to the pan in the subsequent process of scalding; after twelve hours the pans are placed over a charcoal fire, or on a hot plate, or are immersed in cold water in a shallow boiler, which is then heated until the temperature of the milk rises to 180, after which they are again replaced in the milk-room (great care being taken to preserve the surface of cream unbroken), and allowed to stand the usual time. The scalding effects the separation of the whole of the cream from the milk, and greatly facilitates its conver sion into butter. This is readily accomplished by placing the cream in a small tub, and working it with the hand or a piece of flat wood. The butter made from it is said by some persona to be altogether superior to that made without scalding, and also to keep better; whereas others assert, and with good show of truth, that it contains an undue proportion of cheesy matter, and in consequence is more liable to rancidity than other butter. Lancashire Method. A mode of procedure in use in some Lancashire dairies has been much commended. The first drawn and larger portion of the new milk is set aside, and the cream obtained from it is mixed, at the time of churning, with the strippings or afterings, which contain the greater part of the butter obtained at milking. The labour of churning the whole of the milk is thus obviated, and a larger yield of butter is said to be obtained than when the cream only is churned. The separation of the butter from the milk is not so com plete as to secure the absence of some oily matter in the whey, and, on the other hand, of a portion of caseous matter in the butter. Cheese, being a nitrogenous substance, is peculiarly susceptible of putrefaction, and hence even the smallest portion of it present in butter is sure in a very short time to corrupt the whole mass and to impart to it a rancid flavour. Besides this liability to taint, butter, like other fatty substances, readily absorbs odours of all kinds ; and if cream or butter is kept in the same apartment with tainted meat, or other decaying matter, or is stored in vessels that have previously contained any rancid substance, or is exposed to the exhalations of dung-heaps and stables, it is sure to become contaminated. By washing the newly- churned butter repeatedly in cold water, and at the same time working a little salt into it, not only the whey, but the greater part of the caseous matter above referred to, can be removed, and the tendency to rancidity is overcome. If the butter is to be used fresh, it is immediately made into rolls or pats ; but if it is to be cured, half an ounce of fine salt is added for each pound of the butter, and thoroughly incorporated with it ; and the mass, after lying a day, is again worked over, and then packed into a perfectly clean air-tight vessel. In domestic use the most convenient vessels are jars of glazed earthenware. [Market butter is put into casks called half-firkins, firkins, and tubs, contain ing respectively 28 lb, 56 B&amp;gt;, and 84 Ib. These should be of well-seasoned oak, and made perfectly tight, as otherwise the butter is sure to become tainted. Large quantities of butter are also now disposed of in sealed tins. From the facilities which railways afford for cheap and rapid carriage, a very great proportion of our home-made butter is sent to market in a fresh or only slightly salt state. The average yearly product of butter per cow in the butter dairies is usually estimated at from 170 to 200 ft). This is in addition to the new milk used in rearing the heifer calves required to keep up the stock, and to the butter consumed in the farmer s family. 3. Cheese Dairies. Cheese-making is by far the most difficult department of dairy management. Although the art is universally practised, and the raw material is every where substantially the same, there is perhaps no equally common product which varies so much in its quality and market value, from mere diversity in the skill with which it is made. The difficulty of producing really good cheese arises from the peculiar susceptibility of milk to be in fluenced by a great variety of external causes, and the extreme facility with which its component parts undergo chemical changes. Casein, the chief ingredient of cheese, is held in solution in milk by means of an alkali. The effect of neutralizing this alkali is to produce insoluble casein, which when dried forms cheese. When milk is allowed to stand, coagulation takes place on account of the formation of lactic acid. There are various substances which, when added to new milk, promote speedy coagulation. The preparation which is invariably used for this purpose in British dairies ia rennet, provincially called steep or yearning, which is made from the stomachs of sucking calves. To cure them, the stomachs, usually termed bags or veils, as soon as taken from the animal, are turned inside out, carefully freed from all impurities, and salted. They are then packed one upor another, with layers of salt between, into a deep earthen ware vessel, and are covered over with salt, the air being excluded by a close-fitting lid. In the best English dairies the skins are invariably kept for a year previous to About a month before the rennet is needed, a use. sufficient number of the skins are taken out of the jar, and when the brine has drained from them, they are spread out upon a table, powdered on both sides with fine salt, rolled with a paste roller, distended with a splint of wood, and hung up to dry. The rennet is made the day before use by putting into a cup with half a pint of lukewarm water and a tea-spoonful of salt a square inch of the bag for each 10 gallons of milk to be curdled. The power of effecting coagulation is attributed to the minute globular germs existing in prodigious quantities in the steep. The production of these appears to be connected with a kind of decay in the skin, which, however, if it goes too far, causes the cheese made to corrupt prematurely, and renders it unwhole some. In some dairies as much of the rennet is infused at one time as serves for several weeks, or even months ; but the practice of the best dairies is in favour of its daily or at most weekly preparation. To produce cheese of the be&amp;gt;f quality it is indispensable that the rennet be sweet ai;^