Motherly talks with young housekeepers / embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.

by Mrs. H. W. Beecher

But you will try to judge charitably. Perhaps this was a mistake; and it may be that only the peas have suffered. You will try to look cheerful and satisfied, and turn to the nice piece of broiled chicken on your plate. Alas, alas! Juicy and tender, broiled just right to a perfect brown, but all destroyed by this miserably rancid butter! “The offence is rank. It smells to heaven!” What can you do? Where turn? Beets, beans, succotash,—that dish to which, with green peas, you swore allegiance in early childhood, and have faithfully kept the vow,—all destroyed by this most villainous compound. You nibble at a bit of bread or piece of potato, and try to wait patiently till the dessert is brought in, for you see no alternative but to make that your principal meal. You wonder if others are as uncomfortable, but, conscious of the intense disgust your face may exhibit, fear to look boldly around.

Well, there is a balm for almost every woe, and here comes the dessert; it may bring healing for your wounded feelings. What a delicious-looking apple-dumpling! This atones! Will you take wine sauce or hard sauce? You don’t like wine sauce; but the butter in the hard sauce,—dare you venture? Why, surely no one will risk such butter as the vegetables were seasoned with in a delicate sauce! But one taste is sufficient to show you that you have not yet fathomed the depths of economical audacity. You put back your plate and try a bit of pie. Even into the pastry the enemy has found entrance.

But you say, “What is one to do? The rooms are engaged for a month, and I must stay the limited time or forfeit the price of the rooms, and that I cannot afford to do; yet I shall surely starve. I hardly feel that I can eat a meal without butter. The table butter is not so intolerable as that used in cooking, but even that is all I can endure. What can I do?” Will it not be better economy to leave at once, and lose the rent of your rooms, rather than stay and starve a month, or attempt to “fill the aching void” by that which may derange your stomach, and induce fever, dyspepsia, or other sickness, which will cost, in doctors’ bills, ten times the price of your rooms to eradicate?

This great evil will never be remedied while those who board, either regularly or only for a few weeks in the summer, continue to “put up” with this discomfort as one of the ills of life which must be borne. Let it be once fully understood that all boarders—all who frequent fashionable resorts—are fixed in their determination to endure this cruel imposition no longer, and that as soon as they find poor butter is a part of the regular diet, and good butter only an occasional luxury, they will at once leave, and we think the hotels and boarding-houses will soon find means to procure a good article. Let this class of purchasers alone refuse to buy any but the best, and the large number of poor butter makers will soon be taught the necessity of greater carefulness in their dairies.

Bad butter is entirely a needless discomfort. The fault begins, of course, with the manufacturers. They have no excuse, as a general thing. Once in a great while, there may be a reason for a few pounds of poor butter in the dairy, which, though it should be a source of regret, is not necessarily a disgrace. Sickness in the family may sometimes compel the overtaxed housekeeper to neglect the dairy, or leave it for a short time in incompetent hands, who, either indolently or ignorantly, fail to give the milk-pans a thorough scalding, or leave the cream too long on the milk and too long unchurned, who do not understand salting or working over the butter; but in such cases no one with any self-respect will allow the butter to leave their own house. If at all usable, they will sooner submit to the disagreeable necessity of using it for their own food, or put it at once into the only place where poor butter has any right to be,—the soap-grease pot; anything rather than do themselves the discredit, and their customers the injustice, of sending it into the market. That is a species of meanness that should be considered unpardonable; and just as soon as the grocer learns that his customers will not, under any consideration, buy poor butter of him, and the dairymen understand that the grocer will not look at any but the very best, this mischief will be rooted out, “the plague be stayed”; poor butter makers will find their occupation gone, and leave the field to more conscientious and more competent manufacturers, or at once, from self-interest, if not from self-respect, resolutely set about securing instruction, and learn the only way to make good butter. This is easily done; care, neatness, and good judgment are all that is requisite after the mode of operation is understood, and the preliminary steps are simple and easily taken. It is a marvel that this nuisance has been so long tolerated. It is just as easy to make good butter as poor. It is simply want of neatness or deficiency of judgment that fills our markets with a miserable preparation that is only fit for soap-grease or the pigs.

First, take care that your cows are not allowed food that will affect the taste of the milk,—such as turnips, cabbage, or onions; then the cows’ bags and the milkers’ hands must be washed perfectly clean before beginning to milk; any dirt or bad flavor from the cow’s bag or the hands, that may find its way into the milk-pail, will taint the milk and injure the flavor of the butter; for it should be borne in mind constantly, that there is nothing that receives any foreign taste so readily as butter.

Next, all the utensils—pails, strainers, pans, skimmers, churn, butter-bowl, and ladles—must be kept as sweet and clean as scalding water and a hot sun can make them. The cream, even in the coldest weather, must not be allowed to remain on the milk over thirty-six hours, and in warm weather even less. In hot days remove the cream as soon as the milk begins to sour: none will rise after the milk changes. Although it will, of course, become thicker by souring, it does not follow that it will be any better; on the contrary, every moment the cream is left on sour milk takes from the sweetness, quality, and purity of the butter. In churning, the motion should be even, not too rapid, and, when gathered, the butter must be well worked over and salted, and set on the ice, or in a place so cool that it will soon harden and keep so; but be sure that no meat, fish, fruit, or vegetables are put in the milk-room or cellar,—nothing from which the milk or butter will contract any taste. It will require a second salting the next morning, to remove what buttermilk may be left from the first working. One of the great merits of the Blanchard churn is the facility with which the buttermilk can be freed from the butter, as the less manipulation the better for the butter, provided you secure entire freedom from buttermilk.

Many put in a little saltpetre, to make the butter hard and firm,—a bad practice, we think, not only because it gives a slightly unpleasant taste to the butter, but also because it may prove injurious to the consumer. A butter-pail or pot, perfectly sweet, should be well rubbed with salt, and the butter be packed in it, and well pounded down so as to leave no air-holes; then cover the butter an inch deep with brine strong enough to bear up an egg, and put to the brine two table-spoonfuls of pulverized saltpetre. This will help to keep the butter sweet and hard; and, used in the brine, will neither impart any acrid taste to the butter nor be in the least degree unhealthful.

These rules strictly followed by our dairy-women, we are confident that there will be no complaints of bad butter, but the comfort and happiness of the consumers be greatly increased, and the labor of the butter makers in nowise augmented thereby.

We lately saw a receipt for keeping dairy utensils pure and sweet, which we mean to try, as we think it cannot but be advantageous. Keep close by the table on which the milk things are washed “a small tub or a hogshead, according to the size of your dairy. In this, slack some good quicklime, enough to make a thin whitewash; fill with water, cover closely to keep out dirt and dust. The lime will settle, leaving a saturated solution of lime-water over it, as clear as spring water. Wash the utensils as usual; then dip each article into the cask of lime-water, giving them a quick turn, so that every part shall be immersed in the lime-water, then set them up to drain and dry, and the purification is complete.” We presume in the case of a churn, cheese-tub, cheese-press, or other large article, that pouring the lime-water over it will answer the purpose just as well, though using the lime-water up sooner than by dipping into the cask.