Industrial Butter Production

The industrialization of butter production truly took off in the last decade of the nineteenth century, promoted by the invention of the mechanical cream separator. Earlier, the size of creameries had been constrained by the time needed to wait for the cream to rise to the top of the separating vats. The mechanical cream separator allowed cream to be separated out from whole milk in a matter of minutes rather than days, and creameries could start butter production with cream rather than whole milk.