You are on page 1of 9

MILK

~1~

Dear Reader,
Here you are a draft of knowledge for class 2 of Milk hygiene fat determination. At the end of
paper there are pieces of information concerning butter history, features, and biological values and so on.
It is just for lecture and to broaden view for milk as a high quality nutrient.
Source of texts is Internet and among many websites are Wikipedia, English version, FAO and
others. The links are inserted to enable you easy access to sources. All pictures are removed from the
paper. These are for class to illustrate the speech.
Have a nice time appreciating butter as a better food then margarine.
With greetings
Lech

Determination of milk fat


Milk is secreted by the mammary gland of mammals
to feed their offspring
Cows milk is commonly used as human food, but milk from sheep, goats, buffalo, yak, horses
and camels is also used. Milk contains large amounts of essential nutrients and has rightly been
recognized as nature's single most complete food.
As a food, milk serves the following broad purposes:
(a) growth,
(b) reproduction,
(c) supply of energy,
(d) maintenance and repair and
(e) appetite satisfaction.
Nutritionally, milk has been defined as "the most nearly perfect food". It provides more essential
nutrients in significant amounts than any other single food.
Milk is an outstanding source of:
- calcium and phosphorus for bones and teeth,
- riboflavin,
- vitamins B6, A and B1 in significant amounts.
- B12, the antipernicious anaemia vitamin.
Milk fat or butterfat is the second largest component of milk and is of major commercial value. It
serves nutritionally as an energy source and supplies essential fatty acids.

Factors affecting milk composition


Milk composition is affected by genetic and environmental factors.

Genetic
Breed and individual cow

MILK

~2~

Milk composition varies considerably among breeds of dairy cattle: Jersey and Guernsey
breeds give milk of higher fat and protein content than Shorthorns and Friesians. Zebu cows can
give milk containing up to 7% fat.

Variability among cows within a breed


The potential fat content of milk from an individual cow is determined genetically, as are
protein and lactose levels. Thus, selective breeding can be used to upgrade milk quality. Heredity
also determines the potential milk production of the animal. However, environment and various
physiological factors greatly influence the amount and composition of milk that is actually
produced. Herd recording of total milk yields and fat and SNF percentages will indicate the most
productive cows, and replacement stock should be bred from these.

Environmental
Interval between milkings
The fat content of milk varies considerably between the morning and evening milking
because there is usually a much shorter interval between the morning and evening milking than
between the evening and morning milking. If cows were milked at 12-hour intervals the variation
in fat content between milkings would be negligible, but this is not practicable on most farms.
Normally, SNF content varies little even if the intervals between milkings vary.

Stage of lactation
The fat, lactose and protein contents of milk vary according to stage of lactation. Solids-not-fat content is
usually highest during the first 2 to 3 weeks, after which it decreases slightly. Fat content is high
immediately after calving but soon begins to fall, and continues to do so for 10 to 12 weeks, after which it
tends to rise again until the end of the lactation.

Age
As cows grow older the fat content of their milk decreases by about 0.02 percentage units per lactation.
The fall in SNF content is much greater.

Feeding regime
Underfeeding reduces both the fat and the SNF content of milk produced, although SNF content
is more sensitive to feeding level than fat content. Fat content and fat composition are influenced
more by roughage (fibre) intake.
The SNF content can fall if the cow is fed a low-energy diet, but is not greatly influenced by
protein deficiency, unless the deficiency is acute.

Disease
Both fat and SNF contents can be reduced by disease, particularly mastitis.

Completeness of milking
The first milk drawn from the udder is low in fat while the last milk (or strippings) is always quite
high in fat. Thus it is essential to mix thoroughly all the milk removed, before taking a sample for

MILK

~3~

analysis. The fat left in the udder at the end of a milking is usually picked up during subsequent
milkings, so there is no net loss of fat.

Fat:
3 particles of fatty acids
1 particle of glycerol
unsaturated fatty acids share 3 5% of total
80% of fat in form of small globules for 2 to 6 billions
2% of fat shares cholesterol, phospholipids (mainly lecithin ), arytenoids
digestibility 97 99%
melting point 31 - 42C
The fatty acids of butterfat are typically composed as follows (by mass fraction):
Saturated fatty acids:
o Palmitic acid: 31%
o Myristic acid: 12%
o Stearic acid: 11%
o Lower (at most 12 carbon atoms) saturated fatty acids: 11%

Unsaturated fatty acids:


o Oleic acid: 24%
o Palmitoleic acid: 4%
o Linoleic acid: 3%
o Linolenic acid: 1%

Fat Content
Fat - the most variable component (from 2.8 to 6.5%) of the milk
Its determination became almost a routine in the dairies,
because the easiness it is removed from the milk

Gerber's method
Materials and reagents
- Gerber butyrometer for milk and appropriate corks;
- Shelf for butyrometer;
- Volumetric pipette (10 and 11 mL);
- Gerber centrifuge;
- Sulfuric acid (density 1.825 g/L)
- Amyl alcohol (density 0.815 g/L)

Procedure
Carefully pipette or dispense 10 ml of sulphuric acid into the butyrometer;
Carefully add 11 mL milk to the butyrometer, by letting it to slowly flow down the glass walls
in order to it does not mix with the acid;
Pipette or dispense 1 ml of amyl alcohol;
Clean the neck of the butyrometer;
Stopper the butyrometer tightly using a clean, dry stopper.

MILK

~4~

Shake and invert the butyrometer several times until all the milk has been absorbed by the
acid.
Place the butyrometer in a water bath at 65-75C for 5 minutes. mixing content from time to
time
Centrifuge for 4 to 5 minutes at 1200 rpm in the Gerber centrifuge;
Remove the butyrometer of the centrifuge and adjust the meniscus to accomplish the reading.
Adjust bottom meniscus onto zero on butyrometers scale using stopper. Read out fat
content from low part of upper meniscus. Give the fat content with 0,05% result precision

ATTENTION
Hazards
Sulphuric acid is toxic, highly corrosive and will cause severe burning if it comes in
contact with the skin or eyes.
When mixing the butyrometer contents, considerable heat is generated.
If the stopper is slightly loose, leakage may occur during mixing, centrifuging or holding
in the water bath.
Precautions
Avoid all spillage and dropping of sulphuric acid from acid dispensers.
When mixing, hold the butyrometer stopper firmly to ensure that it cannot slip. Use a cloth
or glove to protect the hands when mixing.
Do not point the butyrometer at anyone when mixing.

Counting result
The reading value in the scale is the result of
the percent fat in the milk (% mass / volume)
XXXXXXXXXX

Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. Butter is used
as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications such as baking, sauce making,
and frying. Butter consists of butterfat surrounding minuscule droplets consisting mostly of water
and milk proteins. The most common form of butter is made from cows' milk, but it can also be
made from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. Salt, flavorings,
or preservatives are sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter produces clarified butter or
ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat. When refrigerated, butter remains a solid, but softens to a
spreadable consistency at room temperature, and melts to a thin liquid consistency at 3235 C
(9095 F). The density of butter is 911 kg/m3. Butter generally has a pale yellow color, but
varies from deep yellow to nearly white. The color of the butter depends on the animal's feed and
is commonly manipulated with food colorings in the commercial manufacturing process, most
commonly annatto or carotene.
Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in microscopic globules. These globules
are surrounded by membranes made of phospholipids (fatty acid emulsifiers) and proteins, which
prevent the fat in milk from pooling together into a single mass. Butter is produced by agitating
cream, which damages these membranes and allows the milk fats to conjoin, separating from the
other parts of the cream. Variations in the production method will create butters with different
consistencies, mostly due to the butterfat composition in the finished product. Butter contains fat
in three separate forms: free butterfat, butterfat crystals, and undamaged fat globules. In the
finished product, different proportions of these forms result in different consistencies within the
butter; butters with many crystals are harder than butters dominated by free fats.

MILK

~5~

Churning produces small butter grains floating in the water-based portion of the cream. This
watery liquid is called buttermilk - although the buttermilk most common today is instead a
directly fermented skimmed milk. The buttermilk is drained off; sometimes more buttermilk is
removed by rinsing the grains with water. Then the grains are "worked": pressed and kneaded
together. When prepared manually, this is done using wooden boards called scotch hands. This
consolidates the butter into a solid mass and breaks up embedded pockets of buttermilk or water
into tiny droplets.
Commercial butter is about 80% butterfat and 15% water; traditionally-made butter may
have as little as 65% fat and 30% water. Butterfat consists of many moderate-sized, saturated
hydrocarbon chain fatty acids. It is a triglyceride, an ester derived from glycerol and three fatty
acid groups. Butter becomes rancid when these chains break down into smaller components, like
butyric acid and diacetyl. The density of butter is .911 g/cm, about the same as ice.
Before modern factory butter making, cream was usually collected from several milkings
and was therefore several days old and somewhat fermented by the time it was made into butter.
Butter made from a fermented cream is known as cultured butter. During fermentation, the
cream naturally sours as bacteria convert milk sugars into lactic acid. The fermentation process
produces additional aroma compounds, including diacetyl, which makes for a fuller-flavored and
more "buttery" tasting product. Today, cultured butter is usually made from pasteurized cream
whose fermentation is produced by the introduction of Lactococcus and Leuconostoc bacteria.
Another method for producing cultured butter, developed in the early 1970s, is to produce
butter from fresh cream and then incorporate bacterial cultures and lactic acid. Using this method,
the cultured butter flavor grows as the butter is aged in cold storage. For manufacturers, this
method is more efficient since aging the cream used to make butter takes significantly more space
than simply storing the finished butter product. A method to make an artificial simulation of
cultured butter is to add lactic acid and flavor compounds directly to the fresh-cream butter; while
this more efficient process is claimed to simulate the taste of cultured butter, the product
produced is not cultured but is instead flavored.
Today, dairy products are often pasteurized during production to kill pathogenic bacteria
and other microbes. Butter made from pasteurized fresh cream is called sweet cream butter.
Production of sweet cream butter first became common in the 19th century, with the development
of refrigeration and the mechanical cream separator. Butter made from fresh or cultured
unpasteurized cream is called raw cream butter. Raw cream butter has a "cleaner" cream flavor,
without the cooked-milk notes that pasteurization introduces.
Throughout Continental Europe, cultured butter is preferred, while sweet cream butter
dominates in the United States and the United Kingdom. Therefore, cultured butter is sometimes
labeled European-style butter in the United States. Commercial raw cream butter is virtually
unheard-of in the United States. Raw cream butter is generally only found made at home by
consumers who have purchased raw whole milk directly from dairy farmers, skimmed the cream
themselves, and made butter with it. It's rare in Europe as well.
Several spreadable butters have been developed; these remain softer at colder temperatures
and are therefore easier to use directly out of refrigeration. Some modify the makeup of the
butter's fat through chemical manipulation of the finished product, some through manipulation of
the cattle's feed, and some by incorporating vegetable oils into the butter. Whipped butter,
another product designed to be more spreadable, is aerated via the incorporation of nitrogen gas normal air is not used, because doing so would encourage oxidation and rancidity.
All categories of butter are sold in both salted and unsalted forms. Salted butters have either
fine, granular salt or a strong brine added to them during the working. Nations that favor sweet
cream butter tend to favor salted butter as well, possibly reflecting the blander taste of uncultured
butter. In addition to flavoring the butter, the addition of salt also acts as a preservative.

MILK

~6~

Another important aspect of production is the amount of butterfat in the finished product. In
the United States, all products sold as "butter" must contain a minimum of 80% butterfat by
weight; most American butters contain only slightly more than that, averaging around 81%.
European-style butters generally have a higher ratio of up to 85% butterfat.
Clarified butter is butter with almost all of its water and milk solids removed, leaving
almost-pure butterfat. Clarified butter is made by heating butter to its melting point and then
allowing it to cool off; after settling, the remaining components separate by density. At the top,
whey proteins form a skin which is removed, and the resulting butterfat is then poured off from
the mixture of water and casein proteins that settle to the bottom.
Ghee is clarified butter which is brought to higher temperatures (120 C/250 F) once the
water has cooked off, allowing the milk solids to brown. This process flavors the ghee, and also
produces antioxidants which help protect it longer from rancidity. Because of this, ghee can keep
for six to eight months under normal conditions.

History
Since even accidental agitation can turn cream into butter, it is likely that the invention of
butter goes back to the earliest days of dairying, perhaps in the Mesopotamian area between 9000
and 8000 BCE. The earliest butter would have been from sheep or goat's milk; cattle are not
thought to have been domesticated for another thousand years or so. An ancient method of butter
making, still used today in some parts of Africa and the Near East, is shown in the photo at left,
taken in Palestine. A goat skin is half filled with milk, then inflated with air and sealed. It is then
hung with ropes on a tripod of sticks and rocked to and fro until the butter is formed.
Butter was certainly known in the classical Mediterranean civilizations, but it does not seem
to have been a common food, especially in Ancient Greece or Rome. In the warm Mediterranean
climate, unclarified butter would spoil very quickly - unlike cheese, it was not a practical method
of preserving the benefits of milk. The people of ancient Greece and Rome seemed to consider
butter a food fit more for the northern barbarians. A play by the Greek comic poet Anaxandrides
refers to Thracians as boutyrophagoi, "butter-eaters". In Natural History, Pliny the Elder calls
butter "the most delicate of food among barbarous nations", and goes on to describe its medicinal
properties.
Historian and linguist Andrew Dalby says that most references to butter in ancient Near
Eastern texts should more correctly be translated as ghee. Ghee is mentioned in the Periplus of
the Erythraean Sea as a typical trade article around the 1st century CE Arabian Sea, and Roman
geographer Strabo describes it as a commodity of Arabia and Sudan. In India, ghee has been a
symbol of purity and an offering to the gods - especially Agni, the Hindu god of fire - for more
than 3000 years; references to ghee's sacred nature appear numerous times in the Rig Veda, circa
15001200 BCE. The tale of the child Krishna stealing butter remains a popular children's story
in India today. Since India's prehistory, ghee has been both a staple food and used for ceremonial
purposes such as fueling holy lamps and funeral pyres.
Cooler climates in northern Europe allowed butter to be kept longer before spoiling.
Scandinavia has the longest history in Europe of a butter export trade, dating at least to the 12th
century.[10] Across most of Europe after the fall of Rome and through much of the Middle Ages,
butter was a common food, but one with a low reputation; it was consumed principally by
peasants. It slowly became more accepted by the upper class, especially when, in the early 16th
century, the Roman Catholic Church permitted its consumption during Lent. Bread and butter
became common fare among the new middle class, and the English, in particular, gained a
reputation for their liberal use of melted butter as a sauce for meats and vegetables.
Across far-northern Europe - Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, and Scandinavia - butter was
sometimes treated in a manner unheard-of today: it was packed into barrels (firkins) and buried in

MILK

~7~

peat bogs, perhaps for years. Such "bog butter" would develop a strong flavor as it aged, but
remain edible, in large part because of the unique cool, airless, antiseptic and acidic environment
of a peat bog. Firkins of such buried butter are a common archaeological find in Ireland; the Irish
National Museum has some containing "a grayish cheese-like substance, partially hardened, not
much like butter, and quite free from putrefaction." The practice was most common in Ireland in
the 11th14th centuries; it ended entirely before the 19th century.
France, like Ireland, became well-known for its butter, particularly in the Normandy and
Brittany regions. By the 1860s, butter had become so in demand in France that Emperor
Napoleon III offered prize money for an inexpensive substitute to supplement France's inadequate
butter supplies. In 1869, a French chemist claimed the prize with the invention of margarine. The
first margarine was beef tallow flavored with milk and worked like butter; vegetable margarines
followed after the development of hydrogenated oils around 1900.
Gustaf de Laval's centrifugal cream separator sped the butter-making process.
Until the 19th century, the vast majority of butter was made by hand, on farms. The first
butter factories appeared in the United States in the early 1860s, after the successful introduction
of cheese factories a decade earlier. In the late 1870s, the centrifugal cream separator was
introduced, marketed most successfully by Swedish engineer Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval. This
dramatically sped the butter-making process by eliminating the slow step of letting cream
naturally rise to the top of milk. Initially, whole milk was shipped to the butter factories, and the
cream separation took place there. Soon, though, cream-separation technology became small and
inexpensive enough to introduce an additional efficiency: the separation was accomplished on the
farm, and the cream alone shipped to the factory. By 1900, more than half the butter produced in
the United States was factory made; Europe followed suit shortly after.
Per capita butter consumption declined in most western nations during the 20th century, in
large part because of the rising popularity of margarine, which is less expensive and, until recent
years, was perceived as being healthier. In the United States, margarine consumption overtook
butter during the 1950s and it is still the case today that more margarine than butter is eaten in the
U.S. and most other nations that track such data.
India produces and consumes more butter than any other nation, dedicating almost half of its
annual milk production to making butter or ghee. In 1997, India produced 1,470,000 metric tons
of butter, consuming almost all of it. Second in production was the United States (522,000 MT),
then France (466,000 MT), Germany (442,000 MT), and New Zealand (307,000 MT). In terms of
consumption, Germany was second after India, using 578,000 metric tons of butter in 1997,
followed by France (528,000 MT), Russia (514,000 MT), and the United States (505,000 MT).
Most nations produce and consume the bulk of their butter domestically. New Zealand, Australia,
and the Ukraine are among the few nations that export a significant percentage of the butter they
produce.
Different varieties of butter are found around the world. Smen is a spiced Moroccan clarified
butter, buried in the ground and aged for months or years. Yak butter is important in Tibet;
tsampa, barley flour mixed with yak butter, is a staple food. Butter tea is consumed in the
Himalayan regions of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and India. It consists of tea served with intensely
flavored - or "rancid" - yak butter and salt. In African and Asian developing nations, butter is
traditionally made from sour milk rather than cream. It can take several hours of churning to
produce workable butter grains from fermented milk.

Storage and cooking


Normal butter softens to a spreadable consistency around 15 C (60 F), well above
refrigerator temperatures. The "butter compartment" found in many refrigerators may be one of
the warmer sections inside, but it still leaves butter quite hard. Until recently, many refrigerators

MILK

~8~

sold in New Zealand featured a "butter conditioner", a compartment kept warmer than the rest of
the refrigerator - but still cooler than room temperature - with a small heater. Keeping butter
tightly wrapped delays rancidity, which is hastened by exposure to light or air, and also helps
prevent it from picking up other odors. Wrapped butter has a shelf life of several months at
refrigerator temperatures.
"French butter dishes" or "Acadian butter dishes" involve a lid with a long interior lip,
which sits in a container holding a small amount of water. Usually the dish holds just enough
water to submerge the interior lip when the dish is closed. Butter is packed into the lid. The water
acts as a seal to keep the butter fresh, and also keeps the butter from overheating in hot
temperatures. This allows butter to be safely stored on the countertop for several days without
spoilage.
Once butter is softened, spices, herbs, or other flavoring agents can be mixed into it,
producing what is called a composed butter or composite butter. Composed butters can be used as
spreads, or cooled, sliced, and placed onto hot food to melt into a sauce. Sweetened composed
butters can be served with desserts; such hard sauces are often flavored with spirits.
Melted butter plays an important role in the preparation of sauces, most obviously in French
cuisine. Beurre noisette (hazel butter) and Beurre noir (black butter) are sauces of melted butter
cooked until the milk solids and sugars have turned golden or dark brown; they are often finished
with an addition of vinegar or lemon juice. Hollandaise and barnaise sauces are emulsions of
egg yolk and melted butter; they are in essence mayonnaises made with butter instead of oil.
Hollandaise and barnaise sauces are stabilized with the powerful emulsifiers in the egg yolks,
but butter itself contains enough emulsifiers - mostly remnants of the fat globule membranes - to
form a stable emulsion on its own. Beurre blanc (white butter) is made by whisking butter into
reduced vinegar or wine, forming an emulsion with the texture of thick cream. Beurre mont
(prepared butter) is an unflavored beurre blanc made from water instead of vinegar or wine; it
lends its name to the practice of "mounting" a sauce with butter: whisking cold butter into any
water-based sauce at the end of cooking, giving the sauce a thicker body and a glossy shine - as
well as a buttery taste.
Butter is used for sauting and frying, although its milk solids brown and burn above 150 C
(250 F) - a rather low temperature for most applications. The smoke point of butterfat is around
200 C (400 F), so clarified butter or ghee is better suited to frying. Ghee has always been a
common frying medium in India, where many avoid other animal fats for cultural or religious
reasons.
Butter fills several roles in baking, where it is used in a similar manner as other solid fats
like lard, suet, or shortening, but has a flavor that may better complement sweet baked goods.
Many cookie doughs and some cake batters are leavened, at least in part, by creaming butter and
sugar together, which introduces air bubbles into the butter. The tiny bubbles locked within the
butter expand in the heat of baking and aerate the cookie or cake. Some cookies like shortbread
may have no other source of moisture but the water in the butter. Pastries like pie dough
incorporate pieces of solid fat into the dough, which become flat layers of fat when the dough is
rolled out. During baking, the fat melts away, leaving a flaky texture. Butter, because of its
flavor, is a common choice for the fat in such a dough, but it can be more difficult to work with
than shortening because of its low melting point. Pastry makers often chill all their ingredients
and utensils while working with a butter dough.

Health and nutrition


According to USDA figures, one tablespoon of butter (14 grams/0.5 ounces) contains
100 kcal (420 kJ), all from fat, 11 grams (0.4 oz) of fat, of which 7 grams (0.25 oz) are saturated
fat, and 30 milligrams (0.46 gr) of cholesterol. In other words, butter consists mostly of saturated

MILK

~9~

fat and is a significant source of dietary cholesterol. For these reasons, butter has been generally
considered to be a contributor to health problems, especially heart disease. For many years,
vegetable margarine was recommended as a substitute, since it is an unsaturated fat and contains
little or no cholesterol. In recent decades, though, it has become accepted that the trans fats
contained in partially hydrogenated oils used in typical margarines significantly raise undesirable
LDL cholesterol levels as well. Trans-fat free margarines have since been developed.
Butter contains only traces of lactose, so moderate consumption of butter is not a problem
for the lactose intolerant. People with milk allergies need to avoid butter, which contains enough
of the allergy-causing proteins to cause reactions.

You might also like