History of churning process

There is good reason to believe that the milking of animals and the origin of butter making predate the beginning of organized and permanent recording of human activities. The evolution of the art of butter making has been intimately associated with the development and use of equipment.

Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk to separate the butterfat from buttermilk. Conversion of milk fat into butter is a very old way of preserving milk fat. Most frequently made from cows’ milk, butter can also be made from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks.

The first butter churns had a wooden container and a plunger to agitate the cream until butter formed, referred to as a plunge churn or dash churn. Then, butter churns consisted of a container made from wood, ceramics or galvanized iron that contained paddles. Later centrifugal type butter churns were introduced for butter making. Instead of having spinning paddles, the paddles are fixed and the container spins. This allows better separation of butter from butter milk.

Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, factory butter making was unknown. Most of the butter was made on the farm from cream obtained by gravity creaming. The cream was decanted into a wooden churn and subjected to shear and mild aeration with the help of a stirrer or by rotating the vessel. Once the fat formed clumps, butter milk was removed and the fatty mass gathered and excess moisture removed.

The commercial cream separator was introduced at the end of the 19th century, the continuous churn was commercialized by the middle of the 20th century.

The first butter factories appeared in the US in the early 1860s. In the late 1870s, the centrifugal cream separator was introduced. This eliminated the need to let cream rises naturally to the top of milk. In the beginning, whole milk was shipped to butter factories, and the cream separation took place there. As cream-separation technology became smaller and less expensive, farmers began separating the cream on the farm, and shipping the cream alone to the factory.

The advantages of heat treatment to improve the keeping quality of dairy products were soon realized. This led to the establishment of creameries, where milk was separated, and the availability of larger quantities of cream led to the mechanization of butter making.
History of churning process