Fresh, non-homogenized milk (preferably straight from cow, see below)
Salt

Scald your milk pans every day after washing them; and let them set till the water gets cold. Then wipe them with a clean cloth. Fill them all with cold water half an hour before milking time, and do not pour it out till the moment before you are ready to use the pans. Unless all the utensils are kept perfectly sweet and nice, the cream and butter will never be good. Empty milk-pans should stand all day in the sun.

When you have strained the milk into the pans, (which should be broad and shallow), place them in the spring-house setting them down in the water. After the milk has stood twenty-four hours, skim off the cream, and deposit it in a large deep earthen jar, commonly called a crock, which must be kept closely covered, and stirred up with a stick at least twice a day, and whenever you add fresh cream to it. This stirring is to prevent the butter from being injured by the skin that will gather over the top of the cream.

You should churn at least twice a week, for if the cream is allowed to stand too long, the butter will inevitably have a bad taste. Add to the cream the strippings of the milk.

Butter of only two or three days gatherings is the best. With four or five good cows, you may easily manage to have a churning every three days. If your dairy is on a large scale, churn every two days.

Have your churn very clean, and rinse and cool it with cold water. A barrel churn is best; though a small upright one, worked by a staff or dash, will do very well when there are but one or two cows.

Strain the cream from the crock into the churn, and put on the lid. Move the handle slowly in warm weather, as churning too fast will make the butter soft. When you find that the handle moves heavily and with great difficulty, the butter has come; that is, it has separated from the thin fluid and gathered into a lump, and it then is not necessary to churn any longer.

Take it out with a wooden ladle, and put it into a small tub or pail. Squeeze and press it hard with the ladle, to get out all that remains of the milk. Add a little salt, and then squeeze and work it for a long time. If any of the milk is allowed to remain in, it will speedily turn sour and spoil the butter. Set it away in a cool place for three hours, and then work it over again. A marble slab or table will be found of great advantage in working and making up butter.

Wash it in cold water; weigh it; make it up into separate pounds, smoothing and shaping it; and clap each pound on your wooden butter print, dipping the print every time in cold water. Spread a clean linen cloth on a bench in the spring-house; place the butter on it, and let it set till it becomes perfectly hard. Then wrap each pound in a separate piece of linen that has been dipped in cold water.

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, keept 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.

From Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, Eliza Leslie, Philadelphia, 1851

Comments: We realize that any recipe that starts out with “First milk the cow” is going to be a wee bit intimidating to most modern readers. As few suburban back yards, much less urban ones, allow for pasturing of such beasts, those who wish to make their own butter must seek alternatives.  The most straightforward is to cultivate friendship with someone who does own a cow of a dairy variety.

Next best is to find a source of milk which has not been homogenized. This process breaks the larger cream molecules into itty bitty bits to blend in with the milk fluid. This milk will have been pasteurized in order to be legally sold in most places, but this heating process removes the danger of milk-transmitted diseases without changing its texture. “Raw” milk, which can legally be sold in a few states, is the closest you will get to straight-from-the-cow in textural qualities, but this milk will not have been pasteurized. If you want to go this route we recommend you investigate the supplier thoroughly before buying.  Unpasteurized milk killed many people in Miss Leslie’s day, and there are nastier bugs roaming the world than even she knew.

Beyond that we think Miss Leslie has the procedure pretty well covered and we see no need to try to improve upon her words. If you get through this stage, check out our recipe called “Preserving Butter” which is a continuation of this entry.

          

Fresh butter
Heavily salted water

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.

From Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, Eliza Leslie, Philadelphia, 1851

Comment: This is the second part of Miss Leslie’s article on butter-making, the first of which can be found under the title “Making Butter.” All we can find to add to this excellent summary is to note that the “sweet oil” she mentions is olive oil. The mechanical procedures required to extract oil from corn and other seeds would not come along until a later day.