Butter
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Butter. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the fatty portion of milk. Freshly churned butter contains about 85 per cent of fat and 11 per cent of water. The remaining 4 per cent consists of curd, animal salt, a trace of sugar, etc. Historically, butter from the milk of the cow is quite modern. The first butter was made from the milk of the goat, reindeer, camel, and yak. A large part of the world has never seen butter of any kind. A very small portion is familiar with the butter made from the milk of the cow. Homemade or diary butter is produced by first setting the milk to cool in crocks or pans. The fat of milk is contained in small, oily globules much lighter than water. When milk stands, the heavier portion settles to the bottom of the pan, causing these globules of fat to rise to the surface where they may be skimmed off in the form of cream. Under the setting or gravity system it is claimed that from one per cent to one-half per cent of the cream remains in the skim milk of shallow pans, but that with cans twelve or eighteen inches deep, set in cool water, the remainder may be decreased to one-fifth per cent, or a loss of but three ounces to 100 pounds of butter. The ancients churned the cream of goats by shaking it in sacks. Sometimes the sack was swung like a hammock. The Armenian dairymaid still hangs her goat-skin churn by cords beneath a tripod and swings it to and fro by hand. A small amount of butter may be made by whipping with a spoon. The old-fashioned churn, with a dasher raised up and down by a handle, is still fresh in memory. Modern churns consist of a series of paddles on a common axis caused to rotate by means of a crank. The principle is the same in all churns. By agitation of the cream, the fatty globules are jounced together and made to cohere. Churning should cease as soon as the butter collects into grains the size of wheat. It may then be taken from the buttermilk, worked with a paddle, and salted to taste. Working drives out the remnant of buttermilk, but care should be taken not to destroy the grain of the butter and make it greasy. Dairy methods have changed greatly within the past twenty-five years. Creameries or factories now make about one-third of the total amount of butter produced in the United States . The cream is obtained from the milk by a separator consisting essentially of a series of tubes, centering like the spokes of a wheel in a central cavity. The machine is filled with milk and rotated with great rapidity. The heavier parts of the milk are driven by centrifugal force toward the outside of the machine, forcing the lighter oily globules into the center, whence they are drawn out and sent to the butter worker. A good separator will lose less than two ounces of butter out of one hundred pounds. Creamery butter, like factory cheese, is produced with economy, and under proper management is uniformly of high class. The quality of butter is dependent, of course, at all seasons, on the quality of food consumed by the cow. Some wild plants, particularly the wild leek, render milk and butter unfit for use. Clover and bran stimulate the flow of milk and yield excellent results in butter. The last United States census gives the yield of butter made on farms at 1,071,745,127 pounds, and the yield of creamery butter at 420,954,016 pounds, making an annual total of very nearly 1,500,000,000 pounds of butter. Dairy or homemade butter is usually sent to market in prints; creamery butter in wooden firkins, or jars, or in pound bricks wrapped in oiled paper. America exports about 25,000,000 pounds annually. Denmark exports butter to the value of $35,000,000 each year. It is out of the question to estimate the quantity of butter made in the world. The butter-selling countries and the number of pounds exported by each in 1908 were: Argentina 6,691,980 Australia 66,082,383 Austria-Hungary 7,095,355 Belgium 3,755,227 Canada 4,835,497 Denmark 188,829,579 Finland 28,024,833 France 39,352,944 Germany 535,062 Italy 7,835,006 Netherlands 64,809,205 New Zealand 36,785,392 Norway 2,864,267 Russia 131,378,366 Sweden 38,227,303 United States 3,857,288 Other countries 3,931,478 Total . . . . . 634,891,165 In the same year the butter-buying countries and the number of pounds imported were: Australia 20,885 Belgium 12,529,438 Brazil 5,452,030 Cape of Good Hope 7,533,108 Denmark 8,429,437 Dutch East Indies 3,433,031 Egypt 3,521,070 France 14,671,980 Germany 85,565,569 Natal Netherlands 3,332,634 Russia 469,466 Sweden 1,498,453 Switzerland 7,844,045 Transvaal United Kingdom 462,175,280 Other countries 22,937,851 Total . . . . . 639,414,277 See Cheese ; Cattle ; Adulteration 2026 Editor's Note: Butter fought a century-long war with margarine , which dairy states taxed and even required to be dyed pink; then in the 1960s doctors urged people away from butter for their hearts — only for the trans fats in the margarine that replaced it to prove worse, and for butter to be substantially rehabilitated. The entry's remark that much of the world has never seen it is no longer true. (Ed: BR 2026-07-08)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a fatty substance obtained from milk. Although occasionally made from the milk of goats, buffaloes, etc., it is commonly made from cow's milk. It was used by the ancients as a fuel or as an ointment, or hair dressing, but is now used almost wholly as a food. The composition of cow's milk shows wide variations, but an average analysis is as follows: Fat, 3.65 per cent.; casein, 2.88 per cent.; albumen, .53 per cent.; sugar, per cent.; water 4.81 per cent.; salt, .71 , 87.42 per cent. As here seen, the amount of fat is between 3 per cent. and 4 per cent., and this fat, when separated from most of the other ingredients, forms butter. When of good quality, butter has a peculiar but delicate odor (aroma) and a pleasant flavor. The characters of flavor differ, however, very aroma and much, according to the conditions and methods of manufacture, and they also differ widely with the locality where the butter is made, depending largely upon the taste of the consumer. For example, the people of European countries, in general, are fond of a very mildly flavored butter, and such is found in their markets. In the United States there is a demand for a stronger flavor, and this is produced; while in certain tropical ountcountries a very strong flavor-amounting to a rancid taste is desired, and hence this is characteristic of much of in the tropics. the butter used In former years all butter was made in small quantities, upon individual farms; but the tendency to concentration as other indushas affected this as well tries. To-day a larger and larger proportion of it is being made in butter factories, or creameries, as they are called in the United States. These factories receive the milk and cream from many butter neighboring farms, and make the in very large quantities, one factory in Vermont reaching 20,000 pounds per the whole day. In such large institutions process can, of course, be more carefully controlled than on individual farms, and the butter is generally better and more uniform in character. The temperature can be regulated by of the cream and the of steam and ice, mixtures large amounts of cream from various sources tends to produce more uniformity in the butter than when it is made from the cream of a single farm. The creameries are increasing in number every year and they seem destined to absorb into themselves all the buttermaking industry. The great butter-making countries of the world are the United States, Denmark, Sweden, England, Ireland, and Australia. England imports large quantities from Canada, the United States, and Denmark, as well as from Australia. The United States is an exporting country. The southern countries make much less butter and consume less than the northern countries. In the south, oils, such as olive oil, take, to a considerable extent, the place of butter, and, among the poorer classes, butter is an almost unknown article of diet. During the World War butter was one of the comin price, and modities which rose greatly its use was to a large extent superseded by substitutes. In England butter was rationed long after the conclusion of peace. Certain vegetable oils which are solid at ordinary temperatures, such as palm oil, cocoanut oil, nutmeg oil, etc., are frequently called vegetable butter, and the butter has sometimes been name mineral applied to substances which are wholly different in nature. The word butter has also been used in the names which have been given to various brands of oleomargarine products, e. g., butterine, etc.