Butter-Making Tools and Churns

Butter is made by agitating cream until it emulsifies. The high fat content of cream makes butter possible. This agitation is best accomplished with a churn, which until the mid-nineteenth century was typically a vessel of wood or glazed ceramic. Later in the century, churns were sometimes metal. Churns could hold as little as three pints of cream or as much as sixty gallons. Churns also had different designs. Some worked by moving a perforated dasher up and down through the cream for hours until it emulsified. Others had a turbinelike dasher that was cranked. Sometimes the whole churn rocked or revolved, rather like a washing machine. After 1900, small, glass tabletop churns with hand-cranked gears were introduced. These prepared butter for at most a few days’ use. Dairies, on the other hand, used huge churns that required external power sources, such as windmills or treadmills using animals, to move the dasher.