Herodotus has preserved some interesting details on the manipulation of butter among the Scythians. They received the milk in large pails, and beat it for a long time to separate the most delicate part, and appointed for this labour those enemies whom the fortune of war delivered into their hands. These unhappy creatures were deprived of sight, which prevented their escape.[XVIII_33]
The Romans set about making butter as we do. Pliny says: “Butter is made from milk, and this aliment, so much sought after by barbarous nations, distinguished the rich from the common people. It is obtained principally from cows’ milk; that from ewes is the fattest. Goats also supply some. It is produced by agitating the milk in long vessels with a narrow opening. A little water is added.”[XVIII_34]
Formerly it was required in many countries that the dealer in this article should sell good butter to his customers. In France, for instance, intolerance was carried so far as to forbid “all persons to re-scrape, beat, or work up any butter, either fresh or salted; change, mix, or mingle it, under pain of being whipped.”[XVIII_35] Since then the strangeness of such a measure has become palpable, the more so as modern good faith and honesty render it more useless than ever.
During the early ages of the Church, butter was burned in the lamps instead of oil. This practice is still continued in Abyssinia.[XVIII_36]
The cathedral of Rouen has a tower, called the “Butter Tower.” It acquired this name from the fact that George d’Amboise, who was archbishop of that city in 1500, seeing that oil was scarce in his diocese during Lent, authorised the use of butter, on condition that each diocesan should pay six deniers Tournois (about a farthing) for the permission. The money obtained by these means served to construct the “Butter Tower.”[XVIII_37]
To obtain butter instantly it is only necessary, in summer, to put new milk into bottles some hours after it has been taken from the cow, and shake it briskly. The clots which form, thrown into a sieve, washed and pressed together, constitute the finest and most delicate butter that can possibly be made.
One of the great means of preserving butter fresh for any length of time is, first to press all the buttermilk completely out, then to keep it under water (renewing the water frequently), and to abstract it from the influence of heat and air by wrapping it in a wet cloth.
When butter has become very rancid, it is melted several times by a moderate heat, with or without the addition of water, and, as soon as it has been malaxated, after the cooling, in order to extract any water it may have retained, it is put into brown freestone pots, sheltered from the contact of the air. Frequently, when it is melted, a piece of toasted bread is put into it, which acts in the same manner as charcoal; that is to say, it attenuates the rancidity.[XVIII_38]