Good morning, Mrs Crocombe!

I think I'd like some butter with herbs.

Of course, would you prefer parsley or...thyme?

I think thyme. - Of course.

Thank you dear. - Thank you, Mrs Crocombe. Good day.

Oh I do so like it when Mrs Crocombe comes to visit me here in the dairy

and she trusts me, you know, so I was just going to make the normal standard batch of butter

today but now she has asked for thyme butter, which is a speciality of mine

And, if you would like, you can help me. But I will have to check that you have

scrubbed your hands and your nails. Alright? Follow me.

There you are. Have you done your hands?

Good. So the first thing we must do is scald all of our equipment, so all of the utensils we

are going to use. You're lucky because I have done the churn for you.

Alright, so...

Don't worry about your hands because we will have the buttermilk later on to

soothe them. So once you've got your water in there, just cover it

so that they are as clean as possible.

Ten years ago I used to work on a farm of five hundred acres, and I used to have

to milk the cows myself. But here, at Audley End, the cowkeeper does that for me.

He brings me the milk, which I then leave to settle in pans overnight. The cream rises

to the top and I scrape that off into a jug and then pour the cream into the churn.

Now, I tend to pour it at quite a height so that it aerates, so that it turns quicker.

And now we're ready to begin churning.

So they key to making good butter is to have a measured and steady pace.

We are very lucky here at Audley End House

because our cows are Jersey herd, and they produce the best, the finest milk.

So, the butter churning process can take anything up to 30 minutes to an hour

and it is dependent on the weather, amongst other things. You will feel

resistance when stage one happens, which is the whipped-cream stage and I'm

starting to feel that now so let's have a little look. And yes, here we have stage

one - whipped cream. So I think we have probably another 30 to 35 minutes to go.

The second phase you need to look out for when you are making butter is when

it begins to turn. So you will feel a difference and you will hear a difference.

And when you go to look inside, you will see that the butter is

now slightly powdery so it is beginning to separate.

It looks - forgive me - a little bit like baby sick!

And it is quite pungent to smell.

Now you might be here for up to an hour, but I'll be honest with you.

There are many things that can affect the butter - for example, stormy weather

or just your own mood, some people say.

Sometimes in the winter we have to color

the butter. We tend to use marigolds because quite frankly using carrot juice

makes the butter taste, well, like carrots.

The third phase you need to look out for

is when the butter milk and butter separate. Now you will hear this inside

the churn and you will feel it. And I think we're ready - let's have a look.

Yes, we're ready. So the next thing to do is to drain the buttermilk.

Then, I will remove the paddle and then scoop out all of the butter. It is then

washed in spring water, and then drained.

Ah, there you are!

Thank you for being so patient. It's just it takes about an hour or so

to have all of the water drain out of the butter, and it's important that we do

wash it because we don't want it to go rancid. Then, you can add salt

or, as Mrs Crocombe asked me earlier, thyme for the herbal butter.

So what needs to happen now is for it to be patted

and these are the butter pats which we scalded earlier.

So, the best thing to do is divide it into more manageable sized chunks

because you don't want to make a mess.

Like so. And then just patting it to get rid

of any excess liquid.

This is the stage where we add salt or any other ingredients.

So, here is the normal butter that I make every single day here at Audley End House

- just salted butter. And here is the butter that Mrs Crocombe asked me to

make this morning, made with thyme. And here is the butter that will be going up

to the top table for Lord and Lady Braybrooke. As you can see I have used

three separate molds.

And there we have it

- butter made here at Audley End House, courtesy of Lord and Lady Braybrooke's Jersey herd.