Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1875 — To Restore Rancid Butter. [ARTICLE]

To Restore Rancid Butter.

Rancid butter can be purified in several ways, but it can never be made to taste like new, sweet butter. It will be purified grease, and may take the place of other cheaper forms of shortening for cooking purposes. Good butter owes its pleasant flavor and aroma to the presence of several light oils, or butyrine, caproine and capryline, which, however, never must exceed''2 per ceut. of the entire constituents of ordinary butter. Butter, as it comes to the table, also contains more or less caseine or curd, which cannot be entirely separated from the fatty portions of the butter by the usual methods of working. Exposure to the air is the cause of some of the changes which take place, even in good butter. The oils alluded to above are volatile and are easily absorbed by the atmosphere, at the same time that gasesfloating in the air are taken up to a considerable extent by the butter, so that the best butter that can be made cannot he kept perfectly sweet for a very long time in the open air of our dwellings. When considerable quantities of buttermilk are left in in warm weather, it soon commences to ferment and, as fermentation goes on, these aromatic oils are first acted upon, and change from oils to acids. These acids are called butyric, caproic, eapric and caprylic acids, after the oils from Which they are formed. All except the last have a very disagreeable odor and are also unwholesome as food, i It will be seen, therefore, tljat even if these disagreeable substances can be removed from rancid butter, the fatty substances remaining will have lost all their fine aromatic flavors by which butter is distinguished from lard, suet, oil, or other animal fats.

Several methods are recommended by writers upon dairy matters for removing rancidity in butter, and rendering it passable as food—we can hardly say palatable —for it will never be anything but grease if it has become very rancid. Simply working it over and adding more salt, as many housekeepers have often done, is worse than letting' it alone, as by this means the middle and bottom of the package, which is probably still eatable, is rendered in a short time as bad as the top and sides.

If the whole is past use we should recommend to try washing a small quantity in one of the following methods, as recommended by X. A. Willard and others. Cut the butter into small lumps, and then gradually wash it in blood-warm water, stirring all the time to bring every particle of butter into direct contact with the water, which will.dissolve the rancid oil acids. When thoroughly melted, cold water should be gradually applied to cool and collect mass so that it may be again handled and taken from the water, after which it must he salted and worked as if fresh butter.

Another method is to pour in sour milk or buttermilk instead of the cold water, and stir or churn the butter in it for some time, that the acid of the milk may seize the rancid flavor and remove or change it by a chemical or other process, in the same way that turnip or other flavors are believed to be removed from milk by the souring process. Lime water is also recommended for washing rancid butter,' as is also new

milk,'but whichever method is tried it will’be seen that the butter must be so nearly melted that every particle may come in close contact with the liquid in which it is agitated.— N. E. Farmer.