CONCLUSIONS
Cube Butter in Cold Storage
Boxes paraffined and parchment lined.—White fir and cottonwood can be used in place of spruce for storing butter in cubes, when properly seasoned, paraffined, and parchment lined.
Cottonwood is equal to spruce as a butter container. Butter stored in cottonwood boxes for six months had an average score of 0.048 of a point above spruce treated in the same manner.
Fig. 3.—Method of lining 60-pound boxes with paper.
Fig. 4.—Parchment wrapped butter in parchment lined box.
White fir may be used very successfully. It scored during the six months’ storage only an average of 0.381 of a point below spruce.
In the final scoring, after six months’ storage, none of the cubes packed in seasoned, paraffined and parchment lined containers received a cut directly due to wood flavor.
Green or unseasoned white fir, cottonwood or spruce, may impart a slight wood flavor to the butter when packed in cubes, even though they are paraffined and parchment lined. The butter stored in unseasoned cubes scored an average of 0.218 of a point below the butter stored in seasoned boxes with the same treatment. While the average difference was very small, in some cases there was a decided wood flavor which was pronounced enough to affect materially the flavor of the butter.
Boxes paraffined but not parchment lined.—Unseasoned boxes of white fir, cottonwood and spruce, paraffined but not parchment lined are not entirely satisfactory for storing butter. The butter so stored was criticized in practically all cases for wood flavor. Butter stored in white fir boxes scored 0.358 of a point lower than that in spruce boxes, while butter in cottonwood boxes scored 1.071 lower than that in spruce. Storing butter in cubes without parchment lining or in cubes carelessly lined with parchment will cause objectionable flavors regardless of the wood.
Boxes neither paraffined nor parchment lined.—Butter allowed to come in direct contact with any of the three untreated woods will always take up wood flavor. The injury to the flavor is about equal from all three woods.
Sixty-Pound Boxes Packed for Market
White fir is as good as spruce for 60-pound boxes when seasoned and parchment lined, the butter being wrapped in parchment only. Cottonwood is not quite as satisfactory as either spruce or white fir, there being some criticism on the flavor of the butter.
Butter can be shipped in seasoned white fir or cottonwood boxes, lined with ordinary wrapping paper, if the butter is parchment wrapped and cartoned. There is no advantage in using parchment paper to line the box.
Since there was practically no trouble experienced in the unparaffined boxes, there is no advantage in paraffining the inside of the box.
Since the completion of the investigational work, approximately 40,000 white fir boxes have been used with entire satisfaction for shipping butter at the University Farm.