STUDIES IN THE QUALITY OF THE INDIAN AND THE
                                  WESTERN TABLE BUTTERS

                                                  BY

 ZAL R. KOTHAVALLA, B.AG., ANI HUS. (BOM.), B.Sc. AGRIC. (EDIN.),
                                        N.D.D. (SCOT.)

                            Imperial Dairy Expert, Bangalore

                                                AND

                                NOSHIR S. DOCTOR, B.Sc.

   Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

                  (Received for publication on 14th October 1938)

THE quality of table butter manufactured in this country is often adversely
criticised by foreign visitors who are used to a particular flavour in butter,
available in their own country. For this, some blame the skill of the Indian
butter manufacturer and assert that the art of butter making is very defective
in this country. Whereas, there are others who, with a view to justify the
expansion of the trade of imported butter into India, assert that the quality
of the butter produced depends on the species of animals obtainable in different
countries, not to speak of the kind of food taken by the animals.

The authors therefore set about to investigate how far each of the above
assertions was correct and if necessary assign reasons as far as possible for the
difference which may be found to exist. In order to meet the criticism that
the art of butter-making is little known in this country, the butter-manufac-
turing part of the experiment was put in charge of one of the members of the
staff of the Imperial Dairy Institute, Bangalore, who has experience of making
butter not only under various conditions in India, but also had training under
expert butter manufacturers at some of the best butter-making factories and
creameries in Great Britain and Ireland. To meet the grounds regarding
the kind of animal and the food given to it, it was arranged to obtain milk from
herds of one Indian and one foreign breeds of cows and from buffaloes main-
tained, fed and handled under the same conditions and at the same place. The
results described below are of a preliminary nature as more detailed investiga-
tions into the nature of the fatty acids in the milk fat of the different classes
of animals are still being carried out.

Butter has been graded for years by the skilled sense of taste and smell of
commercial and official judges on an arbitrary standard, factors like flavour,
body, salt, colour and packaging being assigned numerical values according to
their importance, flavour (taste and smell) scoring the highest. The arbitrary
grading standard adopted in America is on the numerical basis of 45 points for

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