Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-09-07
Leathery and Soft Cream.

Cream, as it rises upon milk, is some
times so tenacious, or adhesive, as to
suggest similarity to leather, and
hence such cream is often spoken of as
''leathery." Such cream has solid,
compact structure, and a dry and
smooth-appearing surface. 1t is very
rich in fat, and if skillfully treated
makes excellent butter, but if its Pc
culiarities are not we'll understood, it is
liable to occasion waste and defective
butter. AT other times it will be very
soft and fluid, and often appear to be
covered with a thin stratum of pure
water over its surface exactly the re-
verse of the ''leathery" cream. The
thin cream is the more bulky of the
two. Not being so completely separa-
ted from the milk as the other, it has
the greater depth on the same depth of
milk At other times, the same milk
set under other conditions will have its
cream neither leathery nor thin, but
between the two in huidity, and even in
its consistency.
What makes these different condi-
tons in cream has been puzzle to
many dairyman, and is just now
puzZling some of the dairy writers in
contemporary publications, who seem
to have wholly missed the causes pro-
ducing them.
+ When vessel containing ice-water is
placed in warm atmosphere, dew
gathers upon its surface, because the
very cold surface of the vessel so con-
denses the warm air touching it that
the air in its condensed state cannot
hold the water it was carrying in its
warmer and rarer state. The water
which is thus squeezed out of the air by
its contraction, adheres to the surface
of the vessel in the form of dew.
The same process takes place on the
surface of the water in the vessel that
does on the surface of the vessel, except
that the condensations from the air
mingle with the water in the vessel and
escape observation.
When milk is set in very cold water,
and remains there until it becomes con-
siderably colder than the surrounding
air, the cold milk acts rs condenser the
same as the ice water in warm air, as
above described, and causes condensa-
tons from the air to collect on the top
of the cream and remain there like a
thin sheet of water when the cream is
stiff enough to hold it. These conden-
sationS begin to collect rs soon as the
surface of the cream becomes about ten
degrees colder than the surrounding at
mosphere.
The dispositions of dew thus made
upon the surface of cream, keep it
moist and soft and in excellent condi-
ton, and are thought by some creamery
managers to be very useful; but they
are source of pollution. All that is
foul in the air, and whatever spores it
may contain, go with the dew and lodge
on the cream and contaminate il to its
injury, and, of course, to the injury of
the butter in several ways, especially in
its keeping quality. This accounts for
the soft cream of the creameries in cold
open setting.
Now, as to the ''leathery' cream.
To account for it we have only to re-
verse the conditions and make the air
colder than the milk. When the cold
air touches the warmer milk, the air
expands instead of contracting, and as
it becomes rarified its capacity for hold
ing water becomes increased and it
begins to absorb moisture instead of
parting with it. and it at once COM
mences to load itself by absorbing moist
ure from the surface of the milk Cor
creamy, thereby drying the cream and
making it become adhesive or ''leath-
cry" When milk is submerged under
water there can be neither dew nor desi-
cation, because the small quantity of
air over the milk can neither contract
nor expand. National Lice Stock Jour
nal K4 a. l