SC - "bog butter"

[D. Clay-Disparti]

- -Jean Holtom <Snowfire at mail.snet.net wrote:
 
>>It then had to be de-haired by passing a knife through it several times to
>>remove any animal hairs on the knife edge.

>Probably correct. I think I´ve seen something similar in Icelandic texts and
>there are several references in old sources to the fact that Icelandic
>butter frequently was rather hairy. 

Hairy cows?  Predecessors of Aberdeen Angus?

And completely unsalted, even though it
>was being kept for months, even years. Despite this, my ancestors consumed
>several pounds of butter each week.

I can't help but wonder what it tasted like!

>Extremely poor people, who had no cow and only got a few litres of milk per
>day during the summer from their ewes, would sometimes collect each days
>milk into a barrel for many weeks, then churn the sour milk in the autumn.

>The butter was usually kept in wooden chests or barrels, or in leather
>containers, but always indoors, not buried in the ground out of doors
>(possibly half buried into the floor sometimes, as barrels used for curds
>(skyr) and fermented whey (sýra) frequently were.

Yet again our cultures (sorry for the pun) ;-) seem similar then!

We should be used to this by now!

Elysant :-)




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