I'm not sure how useful this post will be for the #ConfinedKitchen. How likely is it that you'll have heavy cream in the kitchen, and no butter, but you want butter?
So for argument's sake, you want butter. And this will give you some buttermilk too, which can be handy.
You only need two things to make butter. Cream with a high enough fat content. And something to jiggle the cream in.
Cream
Your cream needs to be minimum 30% fat. If any less, you won't be able to bring the cream to its breaking point where the fact globules split away from the liquid content. I've used 300ml of double cream for today.
The butter will taste most flavoursome if you let the cream ripen. Take the lid off and leave it out overnight in the kitchen. Good bacteria get going on the lactose in the cream, converting it to lactic acid (this trick is part of cheese-making too, but more of that some other time). If you were doing this seriously, you'd use an acid meter to measure the acidity and make sure it was at the optimum 0.5%-0.6%.
I don't have that kit, and I bought the cream this morning and left it out for only a few hours so that I could get this done by bedtime! Anyway, you can tell that the ripened cream has thickened up slightly and developed a hint of yellow instead of its shop-bought refrigerated white. That will do.
Cream jiggling
You can make butter with one of these (thank you Graces Guide):
Or if you want something a bit more rustic, one of these (also thank you Graces Guide):
Or any of these:
That's a small wooden hand churn, a plastic pot with a lid, and a frullini. Ignore my firewood basket.
Let's talk about the frullini.
You see that little wooden stick with a whorl of little arms at the base? That's it. Eighteen of them were found during archaeological excavations in the 1960s and 1970s at Fiave-Carera. They first appeared in early Bronze Age levels at the site, and increased in frequency as time went on until the Middle Bronze Age of the sub-Alpine region. They are found in similar sub-Alpine sites like the lake villages where organic preservation in waterlogged deposits is excellent.
They are interpreted as a food-preparation tool, and specifically for butter-making. Their increased frequency in the archaeological record at the site is associated with an increase in the numbers of domesticated animals being kept (herd size increases interpreted from the volume and the species of animal bones on site). So we are going to make Bronze Age butter.
Take a close look. Have you worked out what the frullini is made from yet?
Yes, that's right. It's the top of a Christmas tree. Of the excavated examples from Fiave-Carera, 64% were from Abies species and 38% from Pine. Imagine the very top of the Christmas tree, snipped off below the top-most whorl of branches, stripped and trimmed.
Guess what I do every January at the local tip, where people can recycle their Christmas trees in a huge chipper. In my overalls and safety boots and hi-vis top. With secateurs. So that each year members of the Young Archaeologists' Club can make Bronze Age butter.
Making butter
Pour the ripened cream into a bowl and use the frullini like a whisk, spin it between your palms (without spraying cream over your kitchen), or just beat it around the bowl. Or use an actual whisk if you don't have a handy Christmas tree top to whittle.
The cream will thicken really quickly. You have made whipped cream.
(If you don't have a whisk [and I don't advise using one, they become a problem once the butter comes] you can just put the cream in a jar or pot with a well-fitting lid and shake it about).
Keep going. The cream will start to get kind of grainy. It's the only way I can explain it. It's close to breaking, so keep going. Here it is getting grainy:
All of a sudden you'll start to get pale 'water' in the bottom of the bowl. This is the buttermilk coming; the liquid component of the cream that is being left behind as the fat globules start to coalesce into butter.
Keep going. You have to get the buttermilk out, any left in the butter will help it go rancid quickly. So pour off the buttermilk as you go. You'll lose some small bits of butter as you do it, but try to do it carefully and keep as much of the fat in the bowl.
It won't be long before you can bundle the butter up into a ball and pour off the last of the buttermilk. Now you have to wash the butter. Pour cold water into the bowl, swill it around and pour it off, then mash up the butter some more, wash it again, and keep repeating until the water runs off clear.
Ta da! Butter and buttermilk.
Your butter contains more liquid than shop-bought butter, and you need to work your butter to help reduce the amount still in the fat ball. I'm not going to show you my butter pats and talk about all that squishing and squashing. Just turn the butter out, maybe on a bit of greaseproof paper, and use a spoon to scrape it up and squash it down, scrape it up and squash it down, and repeat... Use a bit of kitchen roll to carefully dab off the drops of moisture that appear. Even so, when you take your butter out of the fridge you might notice that it 'weeps' and a little water will gather in the dish. That's fine, just pour the water away.
Hopefully you can see on the photo above a slight glistening. That's the water, dab it off carefully! You can salt your butter if required - sprinkle a little salt over as you are doing the working, and squash the grains into the fat (one teaspoon to 1lb of butter). Keep it in the fridge. Eat it.
That 300ml of double cream made 5.5oz of butter.
Now I need to find a recipe that'll take that dish of buttermilk...
Troubleshooting
Butter doesn't come? The cream might need to be warmer, or the acidity might be wrong. Don't be afraid to ripen the cream. When you come to make the butter, you will be able to tell (by smell and taste) if the cream is still OK or has gone off (it shouldn't if you are using fresh cream that you bought that day). Just make sure that nothing can get into it/eat it or whatever while it is out overnight ripening.
Bad taste, fishy taste, taint? You may benefit from using dedicated utensils, not general kitchen kit. There might be a mould in the kitchen (Oidium lactis) so you need to clean down thoroughly.
Cheesy flavour? Too acidic, don't ripen the cream for so long next time.
Rancid butter? Dirty equipment, or insufficient washing and working. Don't eat rancid butter.
Here's the excavation report
Perini, R. (1987) Scavi archeologici nella zona palafitticola di Fiave-Carera Part II Campagne 1969-1976. Trento: Servizio beni culturati
So for argument's sake, you want butter. And this will give you some buttermilk too, which can be handy.
You only need two things to make butter. Cream with a high enough fat content. And something to jiggle the cream in.
Cream
Your cream needs to be minimum 30% fat. If any less, you won't be able to bring the cream to its breaking point where the fact globules split away from the liquid content. I've used 300ml of double cream for today.
The butter will taste most flavoursome if you let the cream ripen. Take the lid off and leave it out overnight in the kitchen. Good bacteria get going on the lactose in the cream, converting it to lactic acid (this trick is part of cheese-making too, but more of that some other time). If you were doing this seriously, you'd use an acid meter to measure the acidity and make sure it was at the optimum 0.5%-0.6%.
I don't have that kit, and I bought the cream this morning and left it out for only a few hours so that I could get this done by bedtime! Anyway, you can tell that the ripened cream has thickened up slightly and developed a hint of yellow instead of its shop-bought refrigerated white. That will do.
Cream jiggling
You can make butter with one of these (thank you Graces Guide):
Or if you want something a bit more rustic, one of these (also thank you Graces Guide):
Or any of these:
That's a small wooden hand churn, a plastic pot with a lid, and a frullini. Ignore my firewood basket.
Let's talk about the frullini.
You see that little wooden stick with a whorl of little arms at the base? That's it. Eighteen of them were found during archaeological excavations in the 1960s and 1970s at Fiave-Carera. They first appeared in early Bronze Age levels at the site, and increased in frequency as time went on until the Middle Bronze Age of the sub-Alpine region. They are found in similar sub-Alpine sites like the lake villages where organic preservation in waterlogged deposits is excellent.
They are interpreted as a food-preparation tool, and specifically for butter-making. Their increased frequency in the archaeological record at the site is associated with an increase in the numbers of domesticated animals being kept (herd size increases interpreted from the volume and the species of animal bones on site). So we are going to make Bronze Age butter.
Take a close look. Have you worked out what the frullini is made from yet?
Yes, that's right. It's the top of a Christmas tree. Of the excavated examples from Fiave-Carera, 64% were from Abies species and 38% from Pine. Imagine the very top of the Christmas tree, snipped off below the top-most whorl of branches, stripped and trimmed.
Guess what I do every January at the local tip, where people can recycle their Christmas trees in a huge chipper. In my overalls and safety boots and hi-vis top. With secateurs. So that each year members of the Young Archaeologists' Club can make Bronze Age butter.
Making butter
Pour the ripened cream into a bowl and use the frullini like a whisk, spin it between your palms (without spraying cream over your kitchen), or just beat it around the bowl. Or use an actual whisk if you don't have a handy Christmas tree top to whittle.
The cream will thicken really quickly. You have made whipped cream.
(If you don't have a whisk [and I don't advise using one, they become a problem once the butter comes] you can just put the cream in a jar or pot with a well-fitting lid and shake it about).
Keep going. The cream will start to get kind of grainy. It's the only way I can explain it. It's close to breaking, so keep going. Here it is getting grainy:
All of a sudden you'll start to get pale 'water' in the bottom of the bowl. This is the buttermilk coming; the liquid component of the cream that is being left behind as the fat globules start to coalesce into butter.
Keep going. You have to get the buttermilk out, any left in the butter will help it go rancid quickly. So pour off the buttermilk as you go. You'll lose some small bits of butter as you do it, but try to do it carefully and keep as much of the fat in the bowl.
It won't be long before you can bundle the butter up into a ball and pour off the last of the buttermilk. Now you have to wash the butter. Pour cold water into the bowl, swill it around and pour it off, then mash up the butter some more, wash it again, and keep repeating until the water runs off clear.
Ta da! Butter and buttermilk.
Your butter contains more liquid than shop-bought butter, and you need to work your butter to help reduce the amount still in the fat ball. I'm not going to show you my butter pats and talk about all that squishing and squashing. Just turn the butter out, maybe on a bit of greaseproof paper, and use a spoon to scrape it up and squash it down, scrape it up and squash it down, and repeat... Use a bit of kitchen roll to carefully dab off the drops of moisture that appear. Even so, when you take your butter out of the fridge you might notice that it 'weeps' and a little water will gather in the dish. That's fine, just pour the water away.
Hopefully you can see on the photo above a slight glistening. That's the water, dab it off carefully! You can salt your butter if required - sprinkle a little salt over as you are doing the working, and squash the grains into the fat (one teaspoon to 1lb of butter). Keep it in the fridge. Eat it.
That 300ml of double cream made 5.5oz of butter.
Now I need to find a recipe that'll take that dish of buttermilk...
Troubleshooting
Butter doesn't come? The cream might need to be warmer, or the acidity might be wrong. Don't be afraid to ripen the cream. When you come to make the butter, you will be able to tell (by smell and taste) if the cream is still OK or has gone off (it shouldn't if you are using fresh cream that you bought that day). Just make sure that nothing can get into it/eat it or whatever while it is out overnight ripening.
Bad taste, fishy taste, taint? You may benefit from using dedicated utensils, not general kitchen kit. There might be a mould in the kitchen (Oidium lactis) so you need to clean down thoroughly.
Cheesy flavour? Too acidic, don't ripen the cream for so long next time.
Rancid butter? Dirty equipment, or insufficient washing and working. Don't eat rancid butter.
Here's the excavation report
Perini, R. (1987) Scavi archeologici nella zona palafitticola di Fiave-Carera Part II Campagne 1969-1976. Trento: Servizio beni culturati
This is fascinating! Butter seems to be easier to get than cream, so I probably won’t actually do this, but you never know.
ReplyDeleteI’d make soda bread with the buttermilk.
I’m impressed! Really impressed. My grandparents were farmers, and produced butter. We yet have a wooden hand churn and wooden molds with cow figures. But we don’t use them anymore.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping that my work would come through and provide photos of butter pats, but we don't seem to have them online yet. (https://www.sainsburyarchive.org.uk/catalogue/search/sabr827-butter-pat/)
ReplyDeleteWe do pretend butter patting with play-dough as an outreach activity for children though.