BUTTER ABSORBS ODOR
The volatile fats in butter have the property of absorbing odors, which often results in an undesirable flavor. Great care then must be exercised in keeping butter from coming in contact with materials that will impart a foreign flavor. Butter need be exposed to foreign odors only a short length of time before the flavor is permanently affected.
Experiments[1] were conducted, therefore, to determine whether white fir or cottonwood would impart a flavor to the butter and also to determine the possibility of storing butter in cubes and marketing it in 60-pound cases when these woods were used.
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].