CUBE BUTTER IN COLD STORAGE

The butter for cold storage was packed in white fir, cottonwood, and spruce containers holding ten pounds each. Both seasoned and unseasoned woods were used in each of the three methods of packing.

Fig. 1.—Butter packed in cubes paraffined and parchment lined.

The first set packed with butter were plain unseasoned boxes of each of the woods. The second set had the inner surface paraffined before packing. The method of paraffining was to invert the box over a steam jet and steam thoroughly. This served a double purpose in that it opened the pores of the wood and allowed the paraffin to penetrate, and the heated surface of the wood kept the paraffin in a liquid condition so that it could be put on in a thinner coat than if the paraffin had been applied to a cold surface. After the boxes had been allowed to drain, the inside was then painted with paraffin at 240° F. This method gave a complete covering to the wood, a result which is not always obtained by some of the commercial paraffin atomizers. The third set was paraffined as above and, in addition, lined with good parchment paper so that no butter could come in contact with either wood or paraffin (fig. 1). Twenty-three 10-pound boxes were packed in the three ways.

They were filled with the butter from one churning which scored 92½ after being chilled for 24 hours at 50° F. and were shipped immediately after the first scoring to a cold storage plant in San Francisco and stored at a temperature of 12° F. The butter was scored monthly for six months. The summary of the scoring is given in [table 1].

TABLE 1 Influence of Various Woods on Cube Butter in Storage [2]
No. of sample	Kind of wood	How treated	First score	Lowest score	Average of all scores	Average score of butter in same kind of box
1	White Fir	Unseasoned No Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	89	90.857
2	Cottonwood	Unseasoned No Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	86	89.214
3	Spruce	Unseasoned No Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	88	90.785
4	Spruce	Seasoned Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	89	90.642
6	White Fir	Seasoned Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	90	90.857
7	Cottonwood	Seasoned Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	87	89.571
5	Cottonwood	Unseasoned Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	88	89.857
8	Spruce	Unseasoned Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	90	90.928
9	White Fir	Unseasoned Paraffin No Parchment	92.5	89	90.571
10	Cottonwood	Unseasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	91.0	91.714
11	Cottonwood	Unseasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	89.0	90.571	91.142
18	Cottonwood	Unseasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	89.0	91.142
12	Spruce	Unseasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	90.5	91.5
13	Spruce	Unseasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	91.0	91.571	91.333
14	Spruce	Unseasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	90.0	90.928
15	White Fir	Unseasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	89.0	90.928	91.107
16	White Fir	Unseasoned	92.5	90.0	91.285	91.107
17	White Fir	Seasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	89.0	90.857	91.142
20	White Fir	Seasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	90.5	91.428	91.142
19	Cottonwood	Seasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	90.5	91.571
21	Spruce	Seasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	90.0	91.214
22	Spruce	Seasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	90.0	91.571	91.523
23	Spruce	Seasoned Paraffin Parchment	92.5	91.0	91.785