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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

Blending

Blending.

Of late years a business has arisen which we may call that of "butter-blending." As a guest of the French Dairy-farmers' Association in 1886 I had the advantage of seeing some of the blending establishments in Normandy, and they are both numerous and important. The great bulk of the fine butters coming to London is prepared in these establishments. The business has commenced upon a smaller scale in England and in Ireland, and will probably increase, although the value of the system in England is open to question. The agents of the houses attend the markets and buy the butters in bulk. The purchases are transmitted on the same day to blending-houses, and the following morning they are graded by expert into two or three qualities, as the case may be. The butters belonging to the first quality are blended together upon a circular butter-worker of enormous size, and provided with two powerful fluted rollers. Above the table is a horizontal pipe, in which a number of holes are drilled. As the table revolves with the butter upon it, the tap is turned on by the attendant, and the butter is both salted and coloured by the liquid which flows from the pipe, and which is scattered over the whole mass just as the water from a water-cart is evenly distributed over a street. In this way a page 10 uniform colour and degree of saltness is given, so that when the work is finished it is impossible to detect that a mixture has taken place, however carefully the butter may be examined. As this butter comes from the machine it is weighed in 28lb. lots and packed in baskets, or made up into 2lb. rolls and put up in boxes, which on the same day are sent to the London markets. The finest mild blended butter of Normandy, chiefly made in the County of La Manche, has long since become famous in the south of England. It is generally preferred in hotels and clubs, and by large numbers of private families, to butter of any other class, chiefly, I believe because they have been educated by the merchants who sell it, on account of the difficulty they experienced some years ago in obtaining fine mild home-made butter. This system of blending is of the greatest possible importance to a butter-exporting country, especially as it and it alone, so far as I am able to see, will enable the community of makers to sell a uniform article at all times. There is no reason why New Zealand butter should not obtain a reputation by this means, care being taken, on the part of the makers in the first place and at the blending-house in the second, that the grades are distinct, and that by good judgment each quality is maintained nearly as possible at a uniform point. I am bound to add that I do not believe blended butter can equal the finest farmhouse brands—which are now of very high quality—although very little of such butter is made. Nor can it be expected that by mere manipulation a number of brands of butter—made from cows of different classes fed upon different foods, and managed under different condition—should ever equal a single brand produced from first to last by one skilled person, who is always endeavouring to increase his reputation by the improvement of his wares.