Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

by Henry Ward Beecher

Variety 3. Frowy or frowsy Butter.—This is a second degree of strength attained by the buttermilk. It has become pungent, and too disagreeable for any but absent-minded eaters.

Variety 4. Rancid Butter.—This is the putrescent stage. No description will convey, to those who have not tasted it, an idea of its unearthly flavor; while those who have, will hardly thank us for stirring up such awful remembrances by any description.

Variety 5. Bitter Butter.—Bitterness is, for the most part, incident to winter-butter. When one has but little cream and is long in collecting enough for the churn, he will be very apt to have bitter butter.

Variety 6. Musty Butter.—In summer, especially in damp, unventilated cellars, cream will gather mold; Whenever this appears, the pigs should be set to churn it. But instead, if but just touched, it is quickly churned; or, if much molded, it is slightly skimmed, as if the flavor of mold, which has struck through the whole mass, could be removed by taking off the colored portion! The peculiar taste arising from this affection of the milk, blessed be the man who needs to be told it!

Variety 7. Sour-milk Butter.—This is made from milk which has been allowed to sour, the milk and cream being churned up together. The flavor is that of greasy, sour milk.

Variety 8. Vinegar Butter.—There are some who imagine that all milk should be soured before it is fit to churn. When, in cool weather, it delays to change, they expedite the matter by some acid—usually vinegar. The butter strongly retains the flavor thereof.

Variety 9. Cheesy Butter.—Cream comes quicker by being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt to

separate and deposit a whey: if this is strained into the churn with the cream, the butter will have a strong cheesy flavor.

Variety 10. Granulated Butter.—When, in winter, sweet cream is over-heated, preparatory to churning, it produces butter full of grains, as if there were meal in it.

Variety 11.—In this we will comprise the two opposite kinds—too salt and unsalted butter. We have seen butter exposed for sale with such masses of salt in it that one is tempted to believe that it was put in as a make-weight. When the salt is coarse, the operation of eating this butter affords those who have good teeth, a pleasing variety of grinding.