HOW THE BEST BUTTER IS MADE.
"If I were king," exclaimed a Sicilian shepherd boy, "I would have goosefat with my bread every day."
While the ancient Greeks and Romans already made many varieties of bread, butter was known to them only as a medicine, olive oil being generally used in place of it in the preparing of meals.
It was probably in Italy that really palatable butter was first churned, and very good butter is made in that country to-day; (that poor Sicilian boy had evidently never tasted any, else he would have preferred it even to goosefat!) but the best butter in the world is marketed in Paris. Not once, during half-a-dozen sojourns in that city, have I had butter served which it was not a pleasure to eat.
While bad butter, such as most Americans eat daily, seems to be virtually tabooed in France, there are of course many degrees of excellence. In May, 1912, we visited a number of the leading Paris restaurants with the special object of studying these degrees. Everywhere the butter was very good, but the best, my wife and I agreed after repeated trials, was served at the Bœuf à la Mode. I therefore asked the head-waiter to find out from the dairy just how it was made. He did so, and received in reply a letter which is herewith reprinted in a translation:
In response to your communication of the twentieth I take pleasure in answering your questions. Our butter is always made with the cream of the previous day and after this cream has fermented twelve hours. In this way to-day's milk is skimmed at about noon and the cream is cooled to 37-40 degrees [Fahrenheit], then it is put in a place where it rises to 42°-47° [Fahrenheit] and at this temperature it is kept as nearly as possible till the next morning, when it is churned.
This method is a satisfactory one, and our butter is right.
Believing that these directions will prove to be what your customer wishes I beg you to receive my best salutations.
Marchand.
The information given in this letter relates to one point only, as that was the only point I had inquired about.
What I wanted to know was whether this super-excellent butter was made of sweet cream or of sour cream.
Edwin H. Webster, Chief of the Dairy Division, states in No. 241 of the Farmers' Bulletins, issued by the United States Department of Agriculture, that "practically speaking, all butter used in this country is churned from sour cream. Sweet cream butter to most users tastes flat and insipid." He adds that the American dairyman, when his cream is not sour, deliberately makes it so by adding a "starter," which is nothing more nor less than "nicely soured milk."
In the Paris bookstalls we bought everything we could find as to the French practices in this respect, and furthermore we spent hours in the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the documents relating to it.
D. Allard, Professeur Départmental d'Agriculture, says in his book "Le Beurre": "It is generally remarked that in the regions which produce the finest and best-liked butter, la Normandie and la Bretagne, great care is taken to let the cream turn sour before it is churned. There is here certainly a result of fermentation, for one can, as we have said, impart these qualities to sweet cream by adding select ferments.
"Besides this, fermentation gives another advantage: it makes the cream easier to churn and increases the yield of butter.
"One must not go too far, however. The farmers know very well that the cream of a whole week gives a butter of unpleasant flavor.
"It is therefore the uniformity of fermentation that ensures uniformity in the production of butter; which explains the importance of this question."
Another writer, V. Houdet, Ingénieur-Agronome, Directeur de l'Ecole Nationale des Industries Laitières de Mamirolle, says in his book "Laiterie, Beuerrerie, Fromagerie" (fourth edition, 1912):
"No matter whether the cream has been obtained by letting the milk stand in a low temperature or by means of a separator, it does not, if churned at once, yield anything but a sweet butter, of pure taste but without bouquet and without finesse.
"In order that the butter may have the aroma, and particularly the nutty flavor which the consumers desire and which considerably increases its market value, it is necessary that the cream should ferment, should become soured, before it is churned, for it is particularly on this treatment, this maturation (ripening), that all the qualities of the product depend.
"While the cream is fermenting, the sugar of milk it contains is changed into lactic acid which reacts in the measure of its production on the glycerides, saponifies them while liberating the volatile acids which impart to the butter its perfume and make it keep better.
"At the same time, as with all fermentation, it is necessary to stop in time; an excessive development of acid would yield a strong butter, rapidly undergoing a change and becoming rancid."
Director Houdet also points out, as did Professor Allard, that by souring the cream the yield of butter is "very appreciably increased."
Judging by these remarks, the French way is like the American: the cream is ripened (soured) before churning. Must we, therefore, conclude that the enormous difference (apart from the salt question) between the average American and the average French butter is due chiefly to American carelessness in regard to a number of details, particularly the degree of acidity and the regulation of the temperature which the French authors just quoted declare to be of the utmost importance in the manipulation of the cream while ripening?
Or is our butter usually so inferior because so much of it is marketed after undergoing cold storage, whereas the French get theirs fresh, as they do their poultry? Years ago the State Railway began to run special butter trains from Normandy, Brittany, and the La Rochelle district, which reach the Paris market early in the morning, refrigerating cars being used in summer, so that the butter always arrives in perfect condition.
Doubtless, such differences help to explain the inferiority of our butter; but a question of even greater importance which we must now consider, is this: Is it true that the best butter owes its fine flavor to the ripening of the cream—the churning of sour cream instead of sweet?
The fact that dairymen in France as well as in America do use fermented cream does not necessarily prove this to be the case; for, as we have seen, there are two other very important reasons for ripening the cream: sour cream is more easily churned, and it yields more butter than sweet cream does. This being the case, most dairymen, being human, would naturally be tempted to use acid cream even if it were possible to make a still finer butter with absolutely sweet cream.
That this is possible, is the belief of many experts and epicures. A German lady in Berlin, who has had much experience, informed me that sweet-cream butter was in that region preferred by those who could indulge their appetites all they liked, whereas the sour-cream butter was ordered by those who wished to curb the appetites of their customers (in taverns, &c.). An English official, Francis Vacher, remarks in "The Food Inspector's Handbook," in which he gives the results of his experiences in sampling, that "it seems superfluous to say that butter of fine flavor cannot be made from sour cream. Yet much butter is made from sour cream, particularly in small farms and dairies."
United States Government and State officials have given much attention to this subtle question. While Edwin H. Webster, Chief of Dairy Division, Bureau of Animal Industry, attests, as we have seen, that "practically speaking, all butter used in this country is churned from sour cream,"[11] the Assistant Chief, Harry Hayward,[12] admits that "but a very small percentage of all dairy butter made is of really high grade." Bulletins 18 and 21 of the Iowa Agricultural Experimental Station contain the results of tests made by G. E. Patrick, F. A. Leighton, D. B. Bisbee and W. H. Heilemann, showing that butter made from sweet cream retains its flavor better than butter made from sour cream.
In June, 1909, the U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry issued Bulletin 114, in which the bacteriologist, L. A. Rogers, and the chemist, C. E. Gray, give the results of three years' study of this problem. They found that butter made from ripened (sour) cream, both pasteurized and unpasteurized, develops, in storage, fishy and other flavors typical of storage butter; that butter made from unripened, unpasteurized cream always developed a cheesy or rancid flavor; but that the butter made from pasteurized cream without starter usually retained its flavor with little or no change. Even at 32° F., where all the ripened butter showed decided changes, the sweet-cream butter deteriorated very little. Everything showed that "some factor having a deleterious influence on the butter was developed with the ripening of the cream"; and this whether the acid developed normally in the cream or was added to it, as a "starter." Further: "Butter can be made commercially from sweet pasteurized cream without the addition of a starter. Fresh butter made in this way has a flavor too mild to suit the average dealer, but it changes less in storage than butter made by the ordinary method, and can be sold after storage as high-grade butter."
Still another official of the Department of Agriculture, L. A. Rogers, bacteriologist of the Dairy Division, contributed an important document in favor of sweet cream butter.[13]
He pointed out that a large part of the butter made in the central creameries in which the cream is received in a sour or otherwise fermented condition develops the peculiar oily flavor of mackerel or salmon. After a series of investigations lasting several years he testified that "in all cases in which the records were complete it was found that those experimental butters which became fishy were made from high-acid cream"; and that "fishy flavor may be prevented with certainty by making butter from pasteurized sweet cream."
The same authority informs us that in our central creameries "the cream is usually received in a very acid condition"—surely a most unfortunate circumstance, inasmuch as the experts, including the French, are, as we have seen, agreed that a high degree of acidity spoils the butter. And now we come face to face with the all-important question: Does a low degree of acidity really improve the butter, as Professor Allard and Director Houdet maintain it does?
In other words, is the delicious flavor of the best butter actually due to the lactic acid developed by the ripening of the cream?
Dairy Chief Webster admits that "there are undoubtedly desirable flavors in cream that do not come from the development of acid. Just what these are is not known at the present time, but the rich creamery flavor, or, as it is sometimes described, the nutty flavor, of a fine quality of cream is a combination of acid and other flavors."
The "nutty" flavor is found particularly in May and June butter. The German biologists, H. W. Conn and W. M. Esten, who made careful studies of the ripening of cream which they published in Nos. 21 and 22 of the "Centralblatt für Bakteriologie" (1901) found that "the peculiar flavor of June butter, which is so much desired by the butter-maker, is not due to the development of the common lactic bacteria."
This brings us back to Paris and the Bœuf à la Mode. It was in May that we found the butter there so very delicious, and May is the month when the grass in France is greenest, juiciest, richest in flavoring possibilities. After collecting a large amount of material relating to the influence of food in varying the quality and Flavors of meats (which will be presented in Chapter XII), I have come to the conclusion that it is to this rich spring food that the nutty flavor is chiefly due.
As long ago as the middle of the last century epicures guessed what made the Flavor of spring butter so good. In the first volume of his Gastrophie, Eugen Baron Vaerst declares that "mountain butter is the best. March butter is particularly good because of the grass fodder the cows get. Summer butter is less good, were it only because of the heat and the annoyance to which the animals are subjected by torturing insects.... Winter butter tastes of straw and other winter feed."
The assertion that mountain butter is the best, reminds me of an episode in Bayreuth where, one summer, the family that gave us lodging and breakfast had the butter brought down every morning fresh from the mountains by a peasant girl. You pay in Germany for as much bread and butter as you eat. The first day we ate all that was given us and asked for double the amount next morning, and once more double that for the third day. It was as good and sweet and tempting as ice cream. The incident is worth mentioning as a hint to dealers and butter-makers how they might quadruple their business by supplying people with fresh butter, unsalted and made of sweet cream, as was that Bayreuth mountain butter.
In future discussions of this subject it will be necessary to make it clear just what is meant by sweet cream and sour cream. If, as the two German bacteriologists referred to say, there are some acid bacteria present in milk as it is drawn from the cow, then there is no such thing as absolutely sweet cream; and, chemically speaking, the cream we put in our coffee twelve or twenty-four hours later is still less so. But physiologically speaking, that is to our tongue, such cream still is sweet and remains sweet under ordinary atmospheric conditions for several days; that is, it does not taste sour and does not clot in the coffee cup. From the physiological point of view, therefore, the cream from which the best butter we found in Paris was made was sweet—absolutely sweet to the tongue, whatever the acidimeter may have indicated.
From the foregoing remarks any dairyman who wishes to get rich quick can gather what he must do. Another point must be borne in mind in making butter which is not to be eaten at once. Bulletin 71 of the Iowa Experiment Station calls attention to the fact that to preserve the quality (Flavor) of the butter, it is not enough to pasteurize the cream; the water also must have its germs killed by being heated to a certain degree and then cooled again. The experiments made showed that butter made from pasteurized cream and washed in pasteurized water kept normal just twice as long as butter made from unpasteurized cream and washed with unpasteurized water, even though well-water was used.