Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 May 1880 — The Chemistry of Batter. [ARTICLE]

The Chemistry of Batter.

The production of butter by churning is both a chemical and mechanical process. Milk, according to analysis, is composedof: - : :: : ::: Milk sugar . 47Sallne mutter • Water V.. Good butter should contain at least eighty-two per cent of fat, or oil. This fat is composed of solid or margarine fat, and liquid or oleine. Winter butter contains, of solid fat, sixty-five parts in one hundred, summer butter only forty parts. This fact explains why milk should be churned at different temperatures in different seasons of the yeAr. This fat, oily substance, in the forms of globules, is found in suspension in milk. By the mechanical action of the churn, the envelopes of the globules of the fat are broken, and the globules brought Into cohesion and separated from t&a other portions or components of the cream. By the chemical process the sugar of milk is converted into lactic acid, and the bulk of the fluid, which was put sweet into the chum, is instantly soured. Boassingault prescribes. tne - temperature for churning to be 59 degrees for sweet cream, 62 degrees for four and 64 degrees for milk. About one-fourth of the total amount of butter globules which exist in the cream escape collection, which accounts for the rich taste of the buttermilk. Fresh butter consists of about 83 per cent- of pure batter and 16 of milk of jbutter. The former can be separated by melting the whole in a long tube; after a time the batter proper rises to the top. It Is then drawn off into wafer at 104 degrees, and after two or three washings may be considered quite pure.