Making Butter

The first stage in making butter the traditional way was to pour the new milk into quite shallow settling dishes and leave it overnight to allow the cream to rise to the top.

Shortly before the end of the nineteenth century, a much more efficient means of carrying out this process had been devised using centrifugal force in a machine called a separator. Dairies often had special cool areas, usually on the north side of the farmhouse, where the settling pans could be laid out in a clean, dust and insect-free environment because any tainting of the cream at this stage would inevitably reduce the quality of the butter.

Once the cream had risen to the surface of the pan, it was skimmed off with an instrument called a skimmer and placed in the butter churn.

The upright, plunger butter churn is the oldest type and known to date back to at least the sixteenth century. It was normally of coopered construction, rather like a barrel, and tapered towards the top. It had to be well made so that it didn't leak and there were no rough parts inside where stale cream could lodge and taint the butter. Cream was agitated inside the churn to form butter by means of a plunger that could be moved up and down through a hole in the lid. On the end of the plunger was a perforated wooden disk that assisted the process.

Barrel butter churns of the horizontal type became more common in the course of the eighteenth century. They were easier to use and more efficient than the plunger types. Cream was put into the churn through a hole in the side, which could be sealed by a wooden plate. Turning the handle rotated a set of wooden paddles inside and quickly turned the cream into butter.

The problem was that, as with all butter making equipment, a very high standard of cleanliness was essential if the butter was to be sweet tasting and not sour. The paddles inside these barrel churns could not be removed to be thoroughly scrubbed during the washing process.

Small box churns were widely used at the end of the nineteenth century for making small amounts of butter for household consumption. The handle turned paddles inside the churn which could be easily removed through the large lid for cleaning. They were available in 1905 in a variety of sizes from 4 pints up to three gallons.

From the early twentieth century, very small butter churns were available for home butter making in town or country. Making the jar of glass was ideal for cleaning purposes. Through gearing, the relatively sedate rotation of the handle was transformed into high speed turning of the handles to make the butter come more quickly. Because they were made in large numbers, they were cheap to buy, and so were widely available in the UK.

Newly-made butter had to be 'worked' to remove excess moisture. This firmed it up, made it creamier in taste and improved its lasting quality. In larger farm dairies butter working devices became increasingly common in the second half of the nineteenth century. They consisted of a shallow wooden trough, mounted on a sloping stand, in which the butter was placed and pressed by a roller. Unwanted liquid would drain away through a hole at the lowest point, leaving the butter.