Pour the buttermilk into a clean crock, and place it in the spring-house, with a saucer to dip it out with. Keep the pot covered. The buttermilk will be excellent the first day; but afterwards it will become too thick and sour. Winter buttermilk is never very palatable.
Before you put away the churn, wash and scald it well; and the day that you use it again, keep it for an hour or more filled with cold water.
In cold weather, churning is a much more tedious process than in summer, as the butter will be longer coming. It is best then to have the churn in a warm room, or near the fire. If you wish to prepare the butter for keeping a long time, take it after it has been thoroughly well made, and pack it down tightly into a large jar. You need not in working it, add more salt than if the butter was to be eaten immediately. But preserve it by making a brine of fine salt, dissolved in water. The brine must be strong enough to bear up an egg on the surface without sinking. Strain the brine into the jar, so as to be about two inches above the butter. Keep the jar closely covered, and set it in a cool place.
When you want any of the butter for use, take it off evenly from the top; so that the brine may continue to cover it at a regular depth.
This receipt for making butter is according to the method in use at the best farm-houses in Pennsylvania, and if exactly followed will be found very good. The badness of butter is generally owing to carelessness or mismanagement; to keeping the cream too long without churning; to want of cleanliness in the utensils; to not taking the trouble to work it sufficiently; or to the practice of salting it so profusely as to render it unpleasant to the taste, and unfit for cakes or pastry. All these causes of bad butter are inexcusable, and can easily be avoided. Unless the cows have been allowed to feed where there are bitter weeds or garlic, the milk cannot naturally have any disagreeable taste, and therefore the fault of the butter must be the fault of the maker. Of course, the cream is much richer where the pasture is fine and luxuriant; and in winter, when the cows have only dry food, the butter must be consequently whiter and more insipid than in the grazing season. Still, if properly made, even winter butter cannot taste badly.
Many economical housekeepers always buy for cooking, butter of inferior quality. This is a foolish practice; as when it is bad, the taste will predominate through all attempts to disguise it, and render every thing unpalatable with which it is combined. As the use of butter is designed to improve and not to spoil the flavour of cookery, it is better to omit it altogether, and to substitute something else, unless you can procure that which is good. Lard, suet, beef-drippings, and sweet oil, may be used in the preparation of various dishes; and to eat with bread or warm cakes, honey, molasses, or stewed fruit, &c, are far superior to bad butter.
In making good cheese, skim milk is never used. The milk should either be warm from the cow or heated to that temperature over the fire. When the rennet is put in, the heat of the milk should be from 90 to 96 degrees. Three quarts of milk will yield, on an average, about a pound of cheese. In infusing the rennet, allow a quart of lukewarm water, and a table-spoonful of salt to a piece about half the size of your hand. The rennet must soak all night in the water before it can be fit for use. In the morning (after taking as much of it as you want) put the rennet water into a bottle and cork it tightly. It will keep the better for adding to it a wine glass of brandy. If too large a proportion of rennet is mixed with the milk, the cheese will be tough and leathery.
To make a very good cheese, take three buckets of milk warm from the cow, and strain it immediately into a large tub or kettle. Stir into it half a tea-cupful of infusion of rennet or rennet-water; and having covered it, set it in a warm place for about half an hour, or till it becomes a firm curd. Cut the curd into squares with a large knife, or rather with a wooden slitting-dish, and let it stand about fifteen minutes. Then break it up fine with your hands, and let it stand a quarter of an hour longer. Then pour off from the top as much of the whey as you can; tie up the curd in a linen cloth or bag, and hang it up to drain out the remainder of the whey; setting a pan under it to catch the droppings. After all the whey is drained out, put the curd into the cheese-tray, and cut it again into slices; chop it coarse; put a cloth about it; place it in the cheese-hoop or mould, and set it in the screw press for half an hour, pressing it hard. [Footnote: If you are making cheese on a small scale, and have not a regular press, put the curd (after you have wrapped it in a cloth) into a small circular wooden box or tub with numerous holes bored in the bottom; and with a lid that fits the inside exactly. Lay heavy weights on the lid in such a manner as to press evenly all over.] Then take it out; chop the curd very fine; add salt to your taste; and put it again into the cheese-hoop with a cloth about it, and press it again. You must always wet the cloth all over to prevent its sticking to the cheese, and tearing the surface. Let it remain in the press till next morning, when you must take it out and turn it; then wrap it in a clean wet cloth, and replace it in the press, where it must remain all day. On the following morning again take out the cheese; turn it, renew the cloth, and put it again into the press. Three days pressing will be sufficient.
When you finally take it out of the press, grease the cheese all over with lard, and put it on a clean shelf in a dry dark room, or in a wire safe. Wipe, grease, and turn it carefully every day. If you omit this a single day the cheese will spoil. Keep the shelf perfectly clean, and see that the cheese does not stick to it. When the cheese becomes firm, you may omit the greasing; but continue to rub it all over every day with a clean dry cloth. Continue this for five or sis weeks; the cheese will then be fit to eat.