Udder-2-Buter-art - 5/2/20
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Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous
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by Lady Aleit Pietersdochter, West Kingdom
Lucas van Leyden, The Milkmaid. 1510
". . . I heard of late, ye have had much conference and talke with some honest women of this Countrey, concerning the making of Butter + Cheese after your Countrey sort; and for that your communication liked by them well, by the report that they make thereof, I beseeche you that I may bee so bolde to aske you some questions, concerning the circumstances of the same."
Bartholemew Dowe, 1588
Butter making in the sixteenth century was not a complicated process, but it was a time consuming one in which cleanliness and time of day was of the utmost importance. The basic steps of making butter were: milking the cows, straining (siling) the milk, letting the cream rise off the milk, skimming the cream (fleeting), withholding the cream until there was enough to churn, churning the cream to butter, rinsing the butter, salting the butter, and storing the butter.
Modernly we are able to skip many of these steps thanks to the convenience of the grocery store. The cream is processed already, saving much time. It takes me about 2 hours of total work to make butter when all's said and done. That includes buying the cream at the store, soaking my churn, churning, and cleaning up. I am able to skip the multiple strainings of the milk, cream, and butter. I am able to skip waiting for the cream to rise. Because salting was used as a method of preservation, with refrigeration it is not necessary to salt the butter for long term storage although it will help the butter last.
I buy organic cream without any additives and I try to buy primarily cream from grass-fed cows to be as close to period cream as possible. I define that as grass fed and organic but not all grass-fed organic cream will be additive free. You could potentially also buy raw cream, but I have not tried it myself. In the bay area at local stores these are the creams I have seen without additives; Clover Heavy Whipping Cream, Straus Heavy Whipping Cream, and Humboldt Creamery Heavy Whipping Cream. Heavy whipping creams with additives include Organic Valley and Horizon. Additives can include gellan gum which is a thickener and stabilizer or carageenan. When I want to splurge I purchase Straus whipping cream, but that can add up quickly when churning a quantity of butter. For me, 4 pints of cream yields approximately 2 pounds of butter. As far as fat content goes, different breeds of cow produce milks of varying fat content. I don't really worry too much about what time of cow my milk came from. Here's a list of medieval cattle [http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/history/cattle.html] for those who are really curious.
You'll also need to buy either buttermilk (again free of additives) or buttermilk culture. If you can't find additive free buttermilk, a little Vitamin A palmitate never killed anyone. I've used it before and it's been fine. Do not add yogurt. There are mesophilic and thermophilic cultures, and for butter you want mesophilic. Culture matters! I did not have either buttermilk on hand and was in a hurry to make butter and I really didn't want to go back to the store. I added yogurt to the very expensive Straus cream. 4 days later it was fizzy and sour. My most recent failure came from buttermilk that I had frozen. At the time, I did not know that freezing degrades the culture. According to Cultures for Health, it can take up to two times the amount of frozen buttermilk if it's been frozen longer than 4 weeks. Wooops. I hate making expensive mistakes like this, so I hope you learn from mine.
To a large ceramic or glass bowl I add 1-2 tbsp of buttermilk per pint of cream, the cream, stir it, cover it with a loose towel or saran wrap, and put it in a suitable place out of direct sunlight on the counter. Where this is in my home depends on the season, as does how long I leave it. In the winter I have left my cream on the counter for 5 days and churned it and it was perfectly ok. I've also cultured it for 2-4 days and stuck it in the fridge until I had time to churn. I let the cream come back up to room temperature because that's when cream churns best. Food-safety wise, the culture should not be below 68 or above 78 degrees but I have never monitored it other than the occasional sniff and stir.
I then churn the cream in my butter churn that I've let soak for at least a day. I once left my churn submerged for about a week. I don't recommend this. At some stage anaerobic bacteria will start to grow on things. Churning should take about 15-30 minutes if the cream is at room temperature. From a science standpoint, I once read an article that explained that the proteins holding the fat globules apart broke down for less effort at room temperature which is why it's faster to churn at room temperature, but I can't find that article right now.
After churning I follow some of the steps outlined by Bartholomew Dowe's A dairie Booke for good huswives which was printed in 1588 provides a wealth of information about English dairies in Suffolk. It is a dialogue between a man and a woman, concerning the making of "whitmeate" or butter and cheese. Gervase Markham's 1615 publication The English Huswif also goes into great detail about dairies, and differs little from Dowe's text. I've used them both for learning about butter making. The following information is taken from both of those texts and consolidated here for easy reference.
If you don't have a churn, you can agitate (shake) the room temperature cream in a mason jar with a lid on or you can try using a food processor or stand mixer. It is possible to over churn butter when you use power tools.
There are cute jar churns available at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
Cows only produce milk after they've had calves. Markham says the best time for calving to happen is the end of March or all of April, because at this time there will be plenty of sweet grass for the cows to eat (168). Ideally, milking happened twice a day in the summer. Dowe writes that his mother and her maids were up before four in the morning to begin their day (5), and Markham says there are two good times to milk - between five and six in the morning and six and seven in the evening (169). Dowe also says that milking twice a day is profitable, once in the early morning and once in the evening (13).
During milking "nothing rashly or suddenly about the cow" was to be done (Markham 169).
Markham doesn't specify what happens to the milk after the milking but before it comes into the dairy, saying simply that after milk "is come home to the dairy, the main point belonging thereunto is the housewife's cleanliness in the sweet and neat keeping of the dairy" (169-70). Dowe says that if milk is carried from a distance into the dairy, it should be carried "between two folkes, covered with a faire Lynnen cloth twice double" (14) to keep the filth out. Once the milk was in the dairy, it was strained, or "siled."
Markham instructs the housewives to filter the milk into broad and shallow dishes, because it yields the most cream and keeps the milk from souring. The bottom of the sile dish was covered with a very fine and well washed linen cloth, through which the milk was strained.
Markham writes "The milk which you did milk in the evening, you shall fleet and take off the cream about five of the clock the next morning" (171) and Dowe says the women "flit or skimmed their evening Milke in the morning" (7). Based on the times Markham and Dowe give for fleeting, it would have taken about 12 hours for the cream to sufficiently rise. Markham writes that fleeting should be done "with fine thin shallow dish made for the purpose," Once the cream had been fleeted off, it was kept in a well leaded (glazed) and covered earthen pot (171). Dowe doesn't go into great detail about the containers for the cream other than that "alwaaies it is verie apt and necessary that some be emptie, well washt + breathed while others be occupied" (12). The containers full of cream, according to Markham, could sit for "two days in the summer and not above four in the winter, if you will have the sweetest and best butter. . . you shall not preserve your cream above three days in the summer, and not above six in the winter." (170) It is unclear if cultures from buttermilk were purposefully added to the cream to culture, or if the cream cultured unassisted.
Butter churns in the 16th century, according to Dowe, "ought to be made higher, and broader in the bottome. . . Your cherne staff in the lower ende thereof, to have two pieces of seasoned Timber or Ashe, fast sette on like unto a Crosse, of a hand breadth or more, flatte, with two or three holes bored in the endes of the same crosse peeces. With these manner of Cherne staves, you shall more easily cherne your butter, then with your cherne staves made of a round boorde full of holes" (6).
A modern term for a churn stave is a "dasher." Markham states that churning should happen on whatever day best coincides with local markets, or whatever day works for your house. Dowe does not state a particular day of the week.
The cream gets strained (siled) one more time into a churn (Markham 172), and then churning begins. Dowe cautions that if while churning you "by the space of halfe an hower or more" leaves the butter standing, all the labor from before is worth nothing (12).
Both Dowe and Markham offer advice on what to do if it's too cold or too hot to churn. If it's too hot Markham says the butter will be white, crumbly in texture, and bitter; and if it's too cold the butter won't form at all (172). For workarounds, Dowe mentions filling the churn with "hote liquor" (12) if it's too cold and in summer the churn should be placed in a container with enough cold water around it to keep it cool. Markham offers the same advice.
Markham has more to say on this subject than Dowe, who seems to be more focused on cheese production. Markham instructs that the butter should be carefully gathered up by hand in the churn, and places in "a very clean bowl of wood, or pancheon of earth sweetened for the purpose." The butter should be rinsed with very clean water in the pancheon, and the butter should be worked by hand until all the buttermilk is washed away (172-3). Dowe gives no instructions on how to gather the butter, but says that the butter should be placed in a smooth old bowl and washed until the buttermilk is gone (15).
Both Markham and Dowe state that the butter should be slashed in multiple directions with a knife to collect any "Lint and haires" (Dowe 15).
If the butter were not to be stored for long periods of time, very little salt would be needed if you'd like to have the butter "sweet" or fresh. Markham says to use however much salt "as you shall think convenient, which must by no means be much for sweet butter" (173). For storing butter, salt is an important component in keeping the butter from spoiling. At this point the butter should be spread thinly in a bowl, and sprinkled with salt. and Dowe just says to salt it. Both say to weigh it.
Dowe is once again more concerned with cheese and doesn't mention anything past salting the butter. Markham says that when storing butter, you only need to squeeze out the buttermilk with your hands lest the butter go rancid, and that the butter should simply be salted very well and beaten with the hand until all the salt is mixed in. To do this, a "clean earthen pot" that is "well leaded" (well glazed) should have salt at the bottom of it, the butter should be put in the pot and pressed down, and when the pot is filled the top should be covered with salt so that no butter is visible. The pot is to be kept somewhere cool and safe. If only small amounts of butter are stored in the pot, they can be covered with salt and then the same pot can be used until it is full. Markham writes that really productive dairies, such as those in Holland, filled barrels with salted butter, poked holes through the butter, made strong brines that would "bear an egg", boiled the brine (sometimes with rosemary), cooled it, and then strained it and poured it over the butter and stored the butter in this way. (173-4).
Markham writes that leftover buttermilk should be charitably given to poor neighbors, or be made into buttermilk curds by warming a third part of new milk on the fire then adding it to the buttermilk in the same manner as a posset is made. After stirring the mixture and letting it stand (the longer it stands the better the curds), the curd is skimmed and placed in a colander to drain. The curds were eaten with cream, ale, wine, or beer (175)
I use salt and boiling hot water to clean my churn. I then prop it up in the window to dry out.
By the sixteenth century, butter was allowed during Lent and on fast days. Prior to 1491, this was not the case. Queen Anne, Duchess of Brittany, asked Rome for permission to use butter, not only for herself but for the queen's household as well, since Brittany produced no cooking oil, nor did it import any. Use of butter was granted and by 1495 the same butter permission was granted to Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and France (Khosrova 720-723). If you want to try substitutes for butter there are some interesting recipes.
Second half of the Fifteenth century, Manuscript UB Gent 1035. Translated from Dutch by Christianne Muusers.
1.26. Butter and cheese made of almonds
Make good almond milk. Then let it boil in a pan. Take good wine vinegar with a spoon, sparingly and little in all. As soon the [almond] milk starts to curdle, pull the food backwards and take a small basket with straw in it and a cloth upon it. Let your food cool on it. Have a small cheese mould and mix sugar with the food in it. Make cheese in the cheese mould and butter in the platter.
Jan Mostaert, detail from The Holy Family at Table. 1495-1500
Pieter Aertsen, detail from The Meat Stall. 1551
Pieter van der Heyden, detail from Gula. 1558
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, detail from The Peasant Dance. 1569
Anonymous, Laid Table. 1615
Butter Curler, 1500-1600. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen F 6371 (KN&V)
Floris van Schooten, Breakfast. 1615-20
Joachim Wtewael, detail from A Kitchenmaid in the House of Martha and Mary. 1620-25
Pieter de Hooch, detail from A Woman Preparing Bread and Butter for a Boy. 1660-63
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Copyright 2019 by Aleit Pietersdochter <aleit at thenewcut.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.
If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.
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