A few years back, I did some hearth cooking at a local historic site. And although its house had been built in the 1700s, the specific time period being interpreted was the 1820s. Now, butter churning was one of the activities conducted when school groups came during the week and as part of special events on weekends. So, they’re presenting the 1820s, the early 19th Century. Let’s see, that means a stoneware butter churn was used, yes? Or perhaps a redware churn? Maybe even, wooden? Surprisingly, the answer is one Big Fat “NO.” What’s used is what’s commonly called a “Daisy Churn,” with a glass body and a metal whirlygig-like dasher. But wait! It hadn’t been invented yet! Such churns weren’t available until the late 1800s to early 1900s. But wait, again! The period being represented is the 1820s?! Huh?! Mixing ‘n matching time periods? Centuries, even? What’s up with that? I just don’t understand such nonsense. Why would someone do such a thing and think it’s OK? I don’t get it at all. If you’re an historic house, where you’re presenting how it looked, how things were done, and so on, whether decades or centuries ago, then DO that. Don’t do something else. It is generally believed that what the public is looking for, and what it expects, when visiting an historic site is AUTHENTICITY. (I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard this at various conferences for history museums.) And if staff at a facility aren’t gonna do it right, even to the point of offering up lame excuses as justification for it, how will anyone learn the truth? Isn’t a great disservice being done to visitors? The whole thing just boggles my little pea-brained mind. Blows me away.
And so, THAT is one reason why I try to be as historically accurate as possible in my presentations. I want visitors to see and learn how something was REALLY done, to the best of my and other historian’s knowledge, during whatever time period is being represented and/or is appropriate for a particular site. Yes, perhaps no one would ever know if something wasn’t correct. But I would.
We once went to Shelburne Farms in Vermont and there was a grade-school group visiting. A woman was demonstrating how to make butter in a large Mason jar just by shaking the jar of cream repeatedly. She had the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker and as the kids passed the jar around the circle she would chant, “Shake. Shake. Shake it again. Shake it like a milkshake and pass it to a friend.” Over and over she chanted it in that voice. I’ve never been able to get it out of my mind. But as to my question: was there ever a time when butter was made simply by shaking, with no churn mechanism at all? Or was this just a silly demo for the kids?
That is one way to do it. I’ve even done it in a JIF peanut butter jar (pastic jar and plastic lid). I would guess the song the gal sang was made up (by somebody). In answer to your question, I would say “No.” At the same time, however, it might’ve, may’ve, been possible to do, just by shaking. Thing is, back in say, 410 BCE or 1015 ACE or even 1750, there were really no lidded jars of any kind. Not as in a Mason- or Jif-type. Plus, no one would be making just a coupla pints-worth of butter, as in the size of your Vermont jar; just wouldn’t be worth it. Still, at some point and some where, somebody had to’ve figured out how to get butter from fresh milk, and maybe that’s exactly how it happened: several hundred shakes in some sort of container, and VIOLA! there was butter. It’s like anything, tho…who first figured out you could spin the fibers from the flax plant and get linen? Who first figured out how to crack open a cacao tree pod, found the beans, roasted them, etc. and got chocolate? No one really knows. Having said all that, I’ll look into it, see what else I find. Ya never know!