Note 150 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
Dr. Forbes, in his “Physician’s Holiday,” has given some valuable suggestions on this matter:—
“In looking at the horrid compound sold in England as salt butter—at least, the cheaper sorts of it used by the poorer classes—I cannot but believe that its supersession by the boiled butter of Switzerland would be advantageous, both to the comfort and health of a large proportion of our countrymen. It can hardly be believed that such an offensive, briny, and semi-putrid mass, as the cheaper sorts of our salt butter, can be without serious detriment to the health of the consumers, any more than the salted meat formerly issued to our seamen was so.”
He describes a melted butter used in Switzerland, and earnestly recommends the adoption of the same practice for culinary purposes. It consists in boiling it slowly after it is made: the process takes six hours, two to heat it, two to cool it, and two to simmer it. There is a white, hard cheesy sediment which has carefully to be removed. He also describes a process, by which the whole of the butter of these Alpine pastures is preserved sweet, without salt. “On a board, four or five inches wide, wooden pins two to three feet in length, are fixed upright; the butter is placed daily around these pins, beginning at the lower end, in a mass not exceeding the width of the board. Every day, as more butter is added around the pin, the diameter is gradually enlarged, until the upper part overhangs the base, like an inverted bee-hive. When one pin is filled, another is proceeded with. The exposed surface of these masses gets soon covered with a sort of hard film, which effectually excludes the air.”