Cultured butter

Koops, J. 1964A. Cold-storage defects of cultured butter. Neth. Milk Dairy J. 18, 220-225. 

Minor, T. E. and Marth, E. H. 1972. Fate of Staphyloccus aureus in cultured butter-milk, sour cream, and yogurt during storage. J. Milk food TechnoL 35, 302-306. 

In a similar study on butter flavor [28] we recently showed that a mixture of diacetyl, 8-decalactone and butanoic acid dissolved in sunflower oil in the same concentrations occurring in a cultured butter, closely matched the flavor of the butter itself. 

The above discussion applies to sweet-cream butter only. Little information is available on cultured butter, but O Connell et al. (1975) found that ripened-cream butter is less prone to the development of hydrolytic rancidity than the corresponding salted or unsalted sweet-cream butter. 

Strauss Family Farms built the first dairy plant in Marshall, California. Here they make butter, and bottle milk in glass bottles. Organic Valley built the second plant in Chaseburg, Wisconsin, where they manufacture their European-style cultured butter and reload milk. These two facilities account for less than 10% of the organic dairy production in the United States. The remainder is done by a complex infrastructure of conventional dairy plants. 

Batch churning is one of the steps required for the production of cultured butter. The slow ripening of cream inoculated with a culture over 16 hours produces cultured butter. The resulting cultured cream is then churned into butter that has a unique flavour. 

Cultured butter (CB) Typical butter-like, sweet 2-3... 

Table 5 shows the sensory evaluation by Schieberle et al. (30) of the different kinds of butter, namely, Irish sour cream (ISC), cultured butter (CB), sour cream (SC), sweet cream (SwC), and farmer sour cream (ESC). It revealed ISC butter and ESC butter with the highest overall odor intensities. Table 5 shows that 19 odor-active compounds were detected by aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA) in a distillate of the ISC butter. The highest flavor dilution (ED) factors have been found for 5-decalactone, skatole, i-6-dodeceno-y-lactone, and diacetyl followed by trany-2-nonenal, cw,c -3,6-nonadienal, c/i-2-nonenal, and l-octen-3-one. 

There are several ways of making cultured butter from sweet cream. Pasilac-Danish Turnkey Dairies, Ltd. developed the IBC method (Figure 10) (81). The main principles of the IBC method are as follows. After sweet cream churning and buttermilk drainage, a starter culture mixture is worked into the butter, which produces both the required lowering of butter pH and, because of the diacetyl content of the starter culture mixture, the required aroma. The starter mixture consists of two types of starter culture (1) Lactococcus lactis and (2) L. cremoris and L. lactis ssp. diace-tylactis. With respect to production costs, the experience with this method shows that, for the manufacture of mildly cultured butter, the direct costs are only about one-third of the costs of other methods (81). 

Premolac. [Cronq>ton Knowles] Cultured butter flavor. 

Prmnovan. [Cron9t(m Knowles] Cultured butter-vanilla flavor. 

The occurrence of rather high levels of lactic acid together with high levels of lactose might indicate that the laetie acid has been added to the butter. Together with the inoculation of butter to obtain cultured butter, often lactic acid is added (see Scheme 1). Also it mi t have been added for flavour or as a preservative. 

Parker (40) reported the application of on-line NIR analyses for monitoring continuous-process butter production. The point chosen for NIR sampling was the pipe before the packing line. Two probes, a transmitter and a receiver, were installed in the butter pipe. Fiber-optic cables ran from the probes to the instrument. The laminar flow of the butter in the pipe gave a very reproducible sample presentation with very good spectral data. The instrument was calibrated for moisture in unsalted, salted, and cultured butter and for salt. The same author reported the on-line NIR application in the control of the milk powder spray-drying process. 

Cultured butter is made from milk fat to which a mesophilic starter culture has been added to enhance its flavor, principally that of diacetyl. Diacetyl, made from citrate by LAB, enhances buttermilk s storage properties. Lactobacillus lactis or mixed cultures that contain Lb. lactis, Leuconostoc citrovorum, and Leu. dextranicum are used (Early 1998). Fat (cream) is separated from skim milk by centrifugation of milL The cream is pasteurized and inoculated with selected starter cultures. The ripened cream is then churned. The cream separates again into cream butter and its byproduct sour buttermilk, which has limited use because of its high acidity. 

An alternative process has been developed to produce cultured butter without the formation of sour buttermilk. In this process, lactose-reduced whey inoculated with Lactobacillus helveticus and skim milk inoculated with a starter culture to produce aroma compounds and lactic acid are added to the pasteurized cream. The cream is further churned and worked. The resulting butter is known as sour aromatic butter, and the liquid phase is sweet buttermilk, which is not as addic as sour buttermilk. 

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