is produced in dairies that make large quantities of it usually has not
much opportunity to become contaminated before it reaches the consumer,
for it is generally pressed into 1-pound prints, and each one of these
is then wrapped and placed in a paper carton. On the other hand, the
farmer and the dairyman doing a small business do not find it profitable
to install the equipment required to put up butter in this way, so they
usually pack their butter into firkins or crocks or make it into rolls.
When such butter goes to market, it is generally placed in a
refrigerator with more butter of the same sort, some of which is good
and some bad. As butter absorbs any strong odor present in the
refrigerator and is perhaps cut and weighed in a most unsanitary manner,
the good becomes contaminated with the bad. While butter of this kind is
perhaps a few cents cheaper than that which is handled in a more
sanitary way, it is less desirable, and if possible should be avoided by
the housewife. In case butter is obtained from a certain farm, the
conditions on that farm should be looked into for the same reason that
the conditions in a dairy are investigated.

6. To be able to select good butter, the housewife should also be
familiar with its characteristics. In color, butter to be good should be
an even yellow, neither too pale nor too bright, and should contain no
streaks. The light streaks that are sometimes found in butter indicate
insufficient working. As to odor, butter should be pleasing and
appetizing, any foreign or strong, disagreeable odor being extremely
objectionable. Stale butter or that which is improperly kept develops
an acid called _butyric acid_, which gives a disagreeable odor and
flavor to butter and often renders it unfit for use.

7. CARE OF BUTTER.--The precautions that the farmer and dairyman are
called on to observe in the making and handling of butter should be