Defination,Standards and Principle of Better Making

Butter is essentially milk fat made from milk, dahi (curd) or cream by agitating or shaking it until the fat separates as semisolid mass from the liquid portion (serum) of milk. Its colour varies from pale yellow to deep yellow to nearly white. At room temperature, butter is a semisolid but soft mass which melts easily. The fat in the milk, cream or dahi exists in the form of globules of the size 0.1 – 10.0 micron.These globules are dispersed in milk serum and are surrounded by a membrane,which is composed of surface active agents like phospholipids and lipoproteins. This membrane prevents the fat globules from coming closer and joining together. Agitation in the churn ruptures the membranes and thus enables the globules to coalesce (join together) to form large granules of fat and separate. The separated milk fat is known as butter, while the watery portion as buttermilk. The process of agitation/shaking is known as churning and the device used for the purpose is butter churn.Butter is used as a food ingredient, cooking medium, in medicines, in cosmetics and as offering during worships.

Conventional butter making involves letting a pan of milk to stay undisturbed until a layer of fat (cream) forms on the surface, skimming off the cream layer, natural souring and finally agitating or shaking the cream to separate milk fat from the serum. Subsequent knowledge and experience gained over the years in terms of hygiene, bacterial acidification and heat treatment coupled with rapid advancement in the machinery moved the butter making practice from household level to highly commercial scale. Today, butter is available in many forms - unsalted, reduced and low salt, cultured butter etc., in order to accommodate all consumer needs.