Important: Safety Warning
This page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
In addition, this page recommends preserving food with chemicals such as salicylic acid, borax, or formaldehyde. These substances are toxic when eaten, and their use in food is now prohibited.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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To Preserve Milk
The following receipt appears in Cosmos. "To every 1621. To Preserve Butter by Salting. Mix well together 1 ounce each saltpetre and white sugar, and 2 ounces best salt, all in very fine powder, then add 1 ounce of liter (about 1 quart) of unskimmed milk, this mixture to every pound of butter, and previously poured into a well-annealed glass thoroughly incorporate them together. The bottle, add 40 centigrammes (about 6 grains) butter thus prepared is then to be tightly of bicarbonate of soda. Place the bottle pressed into clean glazed earthenware vessels , (which must be well corked) containing the so as to have no vacant spaces. This butter milk for about 4 hours in a water-bath, heated does not taste well before it has stood for 2 or to 194 Fahr. On being taken out, the bottle 3 weeks, after which it acquires a rich marrow is to be varnished over with tar; and in that flavor, which no other butter ever possesses . state the milk contained in it will keep sound Any good well-made fresh butter, free from and sweet for several weeks." this preparation is sufficient to yield, when boiled with some water, a ration of good soup, and, in case of need, the cakes, being agreeable to the taste, may be eaten raw.