Churning (Butter)

Churning is the process of agitating cream or whole milk, typically using a device called a butter churn, to make butter. From the Middle Ages until the Industrial Revolution, European churns were usually simple barrels worked by a hand plunger, a design now mostly replaced by mechanical churns. Butter is essentially milk fat, generally made from sweet cream skimmed from whole milk rather than from whey, though it can also be made from soured cream that has been allowed to acidify naturally or been fermented with bacterial cultures; salting is customary in Canada, Ireland, Italy, the Nordic countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, while the rest of Europe generally prefers unsalted butter.