[1543] Minshew’s Guide into Tongues, 1617, fol.
BUTTER.
Milk, the most natural and the commonest food of man, is a mixture of three component parts, whey, butter, and cheese. The caseous part is viscous; the butter is the fat, oily, and inflammable part, and properly speaking, is not perfectly dissolved in the serum or whey, but rather only diffused through it like an emulsion, so that it may be separated by rest alone, without any artificial preparation. When milk is in a state of rest, the oily part rises to the surface, and forms what is called cream. When the milk has curdled, which will soon be the case, the caseous parts separate themselves from the whey; and this separation may be effected also by the addition of some mixture, through means of which the produce is liable to many variations. The caseous part, when squeezed and mixed with salt, and sometimes herbs, and when it has been moulded into a certain form and dried, is used under the name of cheese, which will always be better, the greater the butyraceous part is that has been left in it. The cream skimmed, and by proper agitation in a churn or other vessel separated from the whey and caseous parts, becomes our usual butter.
This substance, though commonly used at present in the greater part of Europe, was not known, or known very imperfectly, to the ancients[1544]. The ancient translators of the Hebrew writers[1545] seem however to have thought that they found it mentioned in Scripture[1546]: but those best acquainted with biblical criticism, unanimously agree that the word chamea signifies milk or cream, or sour thick milk, and at any rate does not mean butter[1547]. The word plainly alludes to something liquid, as it appears that chamea was used for washing the feet, that it was drunk, and that it had the power of intoxicating; and we know that mares’-milk, when sour, will produce the like effect. We can imagine streams of milk, but not streams of butter. This error has been occasioned by the seventy interpreters, who translate the Hebrew word by the word boutyron. These translators, who lived two hundred years after Hippocrates, and who resided in Egypt, might, as Michaelis remarks, have been acquainted with butter, or have heard of it; but it is highly probable that they meant cream, and not our usual butter. Those who judge from the common translation, would naturally conclude that the passage in Proverbs, chap. xxx., describes the preparation of butter by shaking or beating; but the original words signify squeezing or pressing, pressio, frictio mulgentis educit lac; so that milking and not making butter is alluded to.
The oldest mention of butter, though it is indeed dubious and obscure, is in the account given of the Scythians by Herodotus[1548]. “These people,” says he, “pour the milk of their mares into wooden vessels, cause it to be violently stirred or shaken by their blind slaves, and separate the part that arises to the surface, as they consider it more valuable and more delicious than that which is collected below it.” The author here certainly speaks of the richest part of the milk being separated from the rest by shaking; and it appears that we have every reason to suppose that he alludes to butter, especially as Hippocrates, who was almost contemporary, mentions the same thing, but in a much clearer manner[1549]. “The Scythians,” says the latter, “pour the milk of their mares into wooden vessels, and shake it violently; this causes it to foam, and the fat part, which is light, rising to the surface, becomes what is called butter. The heavy and thick part, which is below, being kneaded and properly prepared, is, after it has been dried, known by the name of hippace. The whey or serum remains in the middle.” This author, in my opinion, speaks here very distinctly of butter, cheese and whey. It is probable that the Scythians may have hastened the separation of the caseous part from the whey by warming the milk, or by the addition of some substance proper for that purpose. These passages therefore contain the first mention of butter, which occurs several times in Hippocrates, and which he prescribes externally as a medicine[1550]; but he gives it another term (pikerion), which seems to have been in use among the Greeks earlier than the former, and to have been afterwards neglected. That this word signified butter, and was no longer employed in the time of Galen, appears from his translating it, in his explanation of the obsolete expressions of Hippocrates, by the word boutyron[1551]. It was even before that period explained in the same manner by Erotian, in his dictionary of the words used by that Greek physician; and he remarks, from an ancient writer, that the Phrygians called butter pikerion, and that the Greeks seemed to have borrowed the word from these people. It however occurs very seldom, and is to be found neither in Hesychius, Suidas, nor Pollux[1552].
The poet Anaxandrides, who lived soon after Hippocrates, describing the wedding of Iphicrates, who married the daughter of Cotys, king of Thrace, and the Thracian entertainment given on that occasion, says that the Thracians ate butter[1553], which the Greeks at that time considered as a wonderful kind of food.
It is very remarkable that the word butter does not occur in Aristotle, and that he even scarcely alludes to that substance, though we find in his works some very proper information respecting milk and cheese, which seems to imply careful observation. At first he gives milk only two component parts, the watery and the caseous; but he remarks afterwards, for the first time, in a passage where one little expects it, that in milk there is also a fat substance, which under certain circumstances, is like oil[1554].
In Strabo there are three passages that refer to this subject, but from which little information can be obtained. This author says that the Lusitanians used butter instead of oil; he mentions the same circumstance respecting the Ethiopians; and he relates in another place, that elephants, when wounded, drank this substance in order to make the darts fall from their bodies[1555]. I am much astonished, I confess, to find that the ancient Ethiopians were acquainted with butter, though it is confirmed by Ludolfus[1556]. It ought to be remarked also, that according to Aristotle, the elephants, to cure themselves, did not drink butter, but oil[1557]. In this he is followed by Pliny[1558]; and Ælian says, that for the above purpose these animals used either the bloom of the olive-tree, or oil itself[1559]; but Arrian, who lived a hundred years after Strabo, and who has related everything respecting the diseases of the elephant and their cures, in the same order as that author, has omitted this circumstance altogether[1560]. Is the passage of Strabo, therefore, genuine? Ælian however says, in another part of his book, that the Indians anointed the wounds of their elephants with butter[1561].
We are told by Plutarch, that a Spartan lady paid a visit to Berenice, the wife of Dejotarus, and that the one smelled so much of sweet ointment, and the other of butter, that neither of them could endure the other. Was it customary, therefore, at that period, for people to perfume themselves with butter?