How to make butter at home in about ten minutes, from two cups of cream and either a jar or a mixer.
There is no ingredient more foundational to this book than butter, and no season in which it mattered more than spring, when cows freshened after calving and cream once again ran plentiful in the dairy house.
Churning was steady, repetitive work: cream shaken or beaten until it separated into solid fat and thin buttermilk. A household with even one cow in milk was rarely without the means to make its own. The result, worked free of buttermilk and lightly salted, bore little resemblance to anything bought at a store.
To include a recipe for something so basic may seem unnecessary, until one has tasted butter made an hour before it reaches the table.
Homemade Butter
MAKES
About 1 cup butter, plus about 1 cup buttermilk
OVEN
No oven
TIME
8 to 12 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 cups heavy cream, cool, about 50°F to 60°F / 10°C to 15°C
- ¼ teaspoon salt, optional, to taste
- Ice water, for rinsing
Method
- Pour cream into a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, or a large jar with a tight lid.
- Beat or shake vigorously. The cream will pass through whipped cream, then a grainy stage, then separate into solid butter and liquid buttermilk, usually within 8 to 12 minutes of mixing.
- Once separated, strain off the buttermilk and reserve it for another use, such as buttermilk pancakes.
- Rinse the butter solids under cold water, kneading gently with a spoon or clean hands, until the water runs clear. This removes residual buttermilk and helps the butter keep longer.
- Work in salt, if using.
- Press into a dish or shape into a small block. Refrigerate until firm.
Why every household knew how to make butter at home
Butter-making was among the most routine tasks of a farm dairy, typically the responsibility of the woman of the house. A butter churn stood in nearly every kitchen or adjoining dairy room, and the rhythm of churning, steady and unhurried and often accompanied by conversation or a hymn, was as familiar as bread-baking.
Quality varied by household, and a light hand at churning, along with thorough rinsing, was considered a mark of skill. Butter that retained too much buttermilk spoiled quickly and tasted sour. Well-made butter could keep, salted and packed in a crock, for weeks.
In a modern kitchen
A stand mixer dramatically shortens the process compared to hand-churning, though a sealed jar shaken vigorously by hand works well too, and makes a memorable activity for children.
Rinse until the water runs genuinely clear. Butter that still holds buttermilk turns sour within days, and that single step is the difference between a week and a fortnight.
How long it keeps
- Cool room: Refrigerate instead
- Refrigerated: 1 to 2 weeks. Rinse until the water runs clear or it sours within days.
- Frozen: 3 months
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How to Read an Old Recipe translates the vague bits: old measures converted, oven descriptions in real degrees, and the instructions that leave something out. Free, two printable pages.
This recipe is one of forty-seven in The Green Gables Kitchen Companion, arranged across four seasons of a Prince Edward Island year. Everything on this site is written the same way it appears in the book.