This article is from an old magazine, I believe the “Farm Journal” since it mentions the Farm Journal Family Test Group. There’s no date, but I would guess this is from the 1950s judging by the photo of a women in another recipe article.

The full article and recipe is available below, a scan is also included (click to view larger if you like). The article makes reference to a buttermilk biscuit recipe, I included the link to where you can view it.

MAKE BUTTER?

YES takes only 5 minutes with a mixer!

You can make a pound of butter from a quart of heavy cream (30% butterfat content) in five minutes in your electric mixer.

We kept hearing about a revival of home churning when we went farm-visiting, and in letters from readers. So we asked 30 home-churners in FARM JOURNAL’S Family Test Group to tell us why they make butter and how. Two main reason:

Most of the women churn to use up extra cream from the “family cow.” These days farmers who don’t specialize in dairy may keep only a cow or two for their own milk supply. As Mrs. Walter C. Barnes, Dallas County, Iowa, puts it, “There’s not enough cream to sell, and I don’t want to waste it.”

Reason 2: “It’s a luxury to have plenty of butter to cook with. When I make it myself, I feel I can use it with a free hand,” Mrs. Relton Steele, Muskogee County, Oklahoma, spoke for others.

Half the women like to use sweet cream for butter, half prefer sour. Convenience, the amount of cream usually on hand and family taste seemed to be deciding factors. However, if you make butter from sweet cream, you won’t have the acid buttermilk needed for our biscuit recipe in this issue! (Mrs. Roy Andahl, Burleigh County, North Dakota, freezes buttermilk she can’t use immediately, to bake with later.)

If you like butter made from sour cream, you’ll find that adding 1/4 c. cultured buttermilk per quart of cream will help the cream to sour rapidly and will prevent development of “off” flavors.

Though many of the women said they don’t pasteurize cream, a Minnesota farm wife said, “I believe butter made from pasteurized cream retains its superior quality longer. I’ve learned from experience, too, how important it is to rid butter of all milk. In a hurry one day I was careless; that butter didn’t stay sweet. It smelled like sour milk.”

HOMEMADE BUTTER

1. When you are ready to churn, let cream stand at room temperature until it reaches 60 to 64° in winter, 54 to 58° in summer.
2. Pour cream into churn, or large bowl of electric mixer (use only 1 quart in mixer, or it will splash too much). Beat at high speed until flecks of butter begin to form. Then turn to low speed until butter “comes”–that is, separates from the milk.
3. Pour off the buttermilk.
4. Add cold water equal to amount of buttermilk. Agitate at lowest speed. Pour off water and repeat until clear water can be poured off.
5. Work out all water by pressing butter against bowl with wooden spoon.
6. Add 2 tsp. salt. Mix in thoroughly.
7. Press butter into molds, or for long storage, in glass or plastic containers with tight-fitting lids. Store in refrigerator or freezer.

MEASURE BUTTER BEFORE YOU FREEZE IT

Save time later by freezing butter already measured in recipe amounts you use most often (1 c., 1/2 c.)–a slick trick from Mrs. Henry Ross, Prowers County, Colorado.