What type of cream can I get you?

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I wrote recently about my mother making butter by hand when she was first married. To do this, she first needed to separate the milk from the cream. There are several different ways to do this but the third way produces the best cream for making butter. Different dairy cow breeds give varying amounts of butterfat in their milk. The more butterfat, the creamier the milk. Cream is yummy as it is and doesn’t need to be made into butter. When milk is left to sit for a while, any cream content will rise to the top and can be carefully removed. In Australia most dairy herds are comprised of Holstein (Friesian) cows which give high quantities of milk. However a few Jersey or Guernsey cows are included in most herds to raise the butterfat content. Holsteins are black and white. Jerseys and Guernseys originally came from the islands of the same names. Their milk is very rich. These three are the main breeds seen in Australia but other countries might have Swiss Browns, Ayrshires or Dairy Shorthorns. So – if you just let milk sit in a jug or pan, the cream will rise to the top and you can scoop it off to use in your coffee or whatever. Scalded or clotted cream is achieved by setting a large pan of milk over a very low heat. Again the cream rises to the top and forms ‘clots’ hence the name ‘clotted cream’. If you have large quantities of milk as my parents had in their dairy, you can ‘separate’ the cream from the milk for feeding it through a separator. The handle of the separator is manually operated. A weight in the hollow handle moves back and forth as the handle is turned, making a noise. Once the handle is moving fast enough for the noise to cease, you open the valve which allows the milk to go through onto a series of discs. Centrifugal force sends the cream particles through one outlet and the milk through another. The faster you turn the handle, the thicker the cream. If ever we didn’t have a dessert after a meal, there was always bread, jam and cream to be devoured. The photo is of a stamp which was pressed into each pound of butter that Mum made.