Chapter II: Part 2

One of the most essential points in determining the quality of a cheese is the amount of moisture it contains. A proper retention of moisture by the product in a cured state depends primarily on the rennet that separated it from the watery serum of milk, and secondly on the amount of heat applied in cooking, and the quantity of salt afterwards added. To adjust all these little niceties to a minimum of fine, even quality of which moisture is an adjunct, requires experience and long familiarity with the handling and treatment of milk. Butter, moisture and caseine should exist in about equal parts to make a mellow cheese, and, to fix the proportion rightly, enough rennet should be incorporated into the milk to expel all excess of moisture, and yet leave enough to withstand the effect of a heat judiciously gauged to cook it. Thus, rennet influences moisture on the start, and other forces afterward are introduced that either aid or retard it. When rennet diffuses itself through milk its power and potency are largely measured by the temperature of the fluid body surrounding it. As cheese making is merely an imitation of nature’s workings in curdling milk in a calf’s stomach, the nearer we can follow that process on the start, the closer to perfection we get. Long experience has demonstrated that a temperature between 80° and 85° Fahrenheit is the best degree of warmth for milk to have attained when it receives the peptic fluid. A temperature above that expels the butter globules into the whey, and below, the active principle of rennet is not brought out and tardily and incompletely coagulates the mild solids. By afterward applying the lowest degree of heat that will cook it within a reasonable time to a consistency of contraction and expansion, the moisture still remains in proper proportion. A few degrees of excess heat will produce a dry, hard curd, and a future dry, hard cheese. Judgment, discretion, and experience are necessary in applying salt to retain moisture. Salt itself is, of course, a moisture retainer, but a too heavy application hardens and stiffens the cheese structure and retards the curing of the product. Never salt more than enough to give and retain flavor and preserve quality. If the points we have given above have all been observed, then the proper proportion of moisture in cheese will be assured.

Prominent English cheese judges have passed verdicts on fine cheese in the following words: “We want cheese rich, solid, fine flavored, true colored, that is, of an even color throughout, sound, handsome, that will go on to improve for twelve months or longer if desired.” “A good cheese is close and firm in texture, yet mellow; in character or quality it is rich with a tendency to melt in the mouth; the flavor full and fine, apparently that of a hazel-nut.” “The characteristics of a good cheese are mellow and rich in taste and flavor, and firm and full in texture, solid but not tough.” “A good cheese is rich without being greasy, with a sweet, nutty flavor, clear and equal color throughout, and of a compact, solid texture, without being waxy; firm, and yet melts easily in the mouth, leaving no rough or ill-flavor on the palate.” The English conception of peerless cheese is ours, too, and we must continue to grind away on the road of improvement until we bring the united product to the standard of unimpeachable quality and uniformity.

RULE FOR MAKING OUT DIVIDENDS.

Many makers are now expected to figure out the milk dividends for the patrons, and issue fortnightly statements. A quick, easy rule to follow in doing this business, is to first foot up each patron’s milk for the number of days’ delivery in one or two sales, as the case may be, draw a line across the page of the factory account book opposite the date sold up to, and, as you add each man’s milk, set the amount down opposite his name on the tally slate. After you have summed it all up, go over it again, adding from the top of the columns downward. This will correct any mistakes you may have made. Next, add the separate sums of milk together into one grand total and, using this united sum for a dividend, take the number of pounds of cheese in the sale or sales for a divisor, and the quotient will be the ratio or the number of pounds of milk it has taken to make a pound of cheese. Then, multiply the number of pounds of cheese by the price per 100 pounds you get for making, and deduct the product from the full cash amount that the cheese has brought. The residue money divide up proportionately among the patrons as follows: Using the grand total of milk for a divisor, see how many times it is contained in the money, minus cost of making. The quotient will be the net price of one hundred pounds of milk. Multiply each patron’s separate amount of milk by this price per hundred pounds, and the product will be the net monied income on that sale or sales for the patron. In getting the price of a pound of milk it is seldom necessary to carry decimally beyond mills. In a measure, the work all proves itself, for, if, by adding together the face value of each patron’s check, the amount does not agree with the cheese returns, less making, your figuring will need a review.

It is customary now to send out with each check a statement demonstrating and setting forth just how the factory business is running. Thus, each patron becomes a critic of the secretary. I append a statement properly filled out:

SALE STATEMENT.

_Plainfield, N. Y., June 20, 1889._

E. W. WRIGHT’S CHEESE FACTORY.

IN ACCOUNT WITH

MR. JOHN WILLIAMS.

Sold from May 14th to 29th.
===================================================
No. Boxes, 168
Total Milk, 69,779
Total Cheese, 7,026
Price per pound, 3,434 @ 8¼-c. 3,592 @ 8⅛-c.
Ratio, 9.93
Net price per 100 pounds Milk, 71.3
Your Milk, 8,336
Amount less making, $59.43

THE WHEY VAT.

The whey vat may be regarded as a necessary evil, but with means at hand to relieve ourselves of some of its putrefactive characteristics. We trust that the day for having this swill tub harnessed to the factory will soon be an item of the shady past. Whey is all right in its place, but its place, as soon as it is drained from the curd, is a long distance from the factory building. I would place the whey vat ten rods away from the factory, and if night delivery of milk was the rule, I would move it _twenty_ rods off. Get it at least beyond contaminating distance, and then have the whey carried to it in open tin troughs. If the troughs are thoroughly painted you need not fear rust, and as they are of metal they cannot dry up, warp and leak. Have the spouts about the factory perfectly tight so that no whey can fall to the ground, for it is fearful stuff to generate offensive effluvia. Try and keep the whey receptacle as neat and clean as possible. Have it roofed, but open on the sides. Skim the cream from it every morning, and it would be much better if you would churn it fresh instead of keeping it for weeks to be rendered out in a kettle by fire. Scrub the vat out every day with a broom; it will take five minutes’ time and a pailful of hot water. Make it a rule for each patron to draw away no more than three pails of whey for every hundred pounds of milk delivered. Also, make it a rule to yard nobody’s pigs or calves about the premises for convenient whey slopping. Insist on it that if your patrons insist on drawing sour whey home in their milk cans they put on extra “elbow grease” afterward in cleansing them. A cheese maker hardly likes to make the imputation to patrons that their wives are not neat (only, perhaps, when they are in a great hurry) about scalding out the sour whey from milk cans, and yet such insinuations on his part are often necessary.

WHYS AND WHEREFORES.

Curd is first cut with the horizontal knife, to facilitate easy expulsion of the whey.

Cheese is a good edible, because, besides being highly nutritive, the rennet or gastric juice it contains aids digestion and the assimilation of other foods.

Whey should never be fed to cows, because, having once been secreted in their mammillary glands in the form of milk, it has now taken on the nature of an excrement; consequently, a re-secretion would be highly prejudicial to the quality and healthfulness of the product.

It was formerly supposed that febrine was exclusively a constituent of animal blood; but now the theory that slight traces of it in milk induce rennet coagulation is generally accepted as authentic.

If a cheese is misshapen, by uneven pressing or otherwise, when taken from the hoop, put it back and press it over again. Remember that appearance goes a long way with dealers. Do not tolerate any cheese in the room that are deformed.

Cheese makers should insist that patrons with large messes of milk set their night’s yield in two cans, thoroughly air the fluid, by stirring or dipping immediately subsequent to milking, and then dump both portions together in the morning, so as not to mix night’s and morning’s milk until it is mixed in common in the cheese vat. If this rule is insisted upon and faithfully observed, a great deal of damaged milk will be avoided.

A quack doctor should as soon be granted a diploma to practice, as an ignorant apprentice at cheese making be given the responsibility of the manufacture of a vat of milk. The health of the community is in great danger from both frauds.

Cheese that are surface mottled, spread the bandage and show a soft, weak rind, have been insufficiently cooked. The remedy lies in a more upward tendency of the mercury.

The art of cheese making cannot be learned wholly from paper, because variations of milk quality constantly clash with regular modes of procedure. Here the practical experience and sound judgment of the maker must intervene and offset the lacteal variation, by appropriate changes in the manner of working the product.

Making good cheese out of poor milk is much talked of by makers and considered quite an accomplishment. It consists in clothing the product in a glamour of deception, propagating dyspepsia and shielding careless dairymen.

Skimmed cheese is dry and tasteless and unfit for human food, because the meat has been extracted, and the shell left. It should take a back seat on the bench of humiliation beside oleomargarine.

When whey sparkles it is sour.

When raw curd settles quickly after being cut up, it is a signal that it is aging rapidly and developing acid. White scum on the whey indicates the presence of acid.

Butter exuding slightly from the hoops of pressing cheese tells of acid and bespeaks a fine quality of goods. Butter exuding in excessive quantity from the hoops is proof that the milk has either been violently shaken up over rough roads or has been set at a very high temperature.

You cannot get a good rind on a poor quality of cheese; you can always have a perfect rind on one of good quality. Thus, in one sense, the rind indicates the quality.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness” about a factory, because, milk being an animal fluid it is of nitrogenous composition, and the waste that accrues from it on decomposition becomes the most fetid carrion.

Buttermilk added to sweet milk in making cheese is a diabolical habit, the object, nowadays, being not to produce cheese from slop but from pure, wholesome milk alone.

Airing curds thoroughly after salting is necessary to expel gaseous odors. The improved quality of the cheese will repay every maker for doing it.

Never cease to agitate the question of only six days’ labor in the week for the cheese maker. Agitate it, because God has laid it down as a commandment for all mankind, and nature inexorably exacts from the physical forces every violation of the rule.

Keep the curing room at an even temperature of from 65° to 70° Fahrenheit, because a less amount of heat might sour the green cheese on the shelves and more warmth might cause them to lose butter to the point of off flavor.

Keep the surface of cheese impervious to fly attacks and you will never be troubled with skippers.

Never use sour press clothes on cheese, not only from sense of neatness, but because the rank acid will check the rind.

If you are caught with a soft curd on your hands, one that has soured so quickly that you have had no opportunity to give it a firm cook, grind it twice and stir it more than usual. This will reduce pulpy lumps, add stability to the curd and prevent the cheese from spreading out of shape in the bandage.

Rennet is the life and soul of cheese, as much depending on its efficacy as on yeast in bread. Excessive heat stifles and kills out its virtue and leaves the cheese structure dead and indigestible. Makers should bear this fact in mind and never allow the cooking curd to rest long on the bottom of the vat.

The rennet jar should never be covered, as nothing can be mentioned that is more liable to contract fetid taint than these skins. Exclusion of air from the vessel in which they are soaking is extremely liable to spoil them in spite of the salt the liquor contains.

In weighing patrons’ milk at the factory, the scales should be balanced down and up weight taken. To the uninitiated this might at first seem an injustice, but a little experience will soon show that it is imperatively necessary. The dealers to whom the cheese are consigned exact stiff up weight, and if the same is not taken at the milk delivery window, woe be to the ratio. As all patrons are served alike in the premises, no loss or injustice accrues to any one and the maker is in a position to deal as he is being dealt with.

Pulverize salt thoroughly before sprinkling it over the curd. Hard lumps will not dissolve and will produce cauterized spots through the cheese.

During the hot weather of summer remember that curd will stand a third more souring, and yet come down into mellow cheese, than it would earlier or later in the season. Bearing this fact in mind gives a maker mental relief when he has a curd that has the start of him on acid and yet afterward comes out all right, perhaps making the best cheese in the room.

Saving curd over to mix in with the next day’s cheese is not desirable, but it is often unavoidable, as cheese of as even weight as possible are always wanted. Take the curd to be saved over and put it in a bag of bandage cloth. Mix into it an extra handful of salt, in order to prevent too much souring, and hang the sack in a cool, dry place. The next day, just prior to drawing the whey, empty the old curd into the vat and stir it up with the new.

There are sometimes extreme cases of butter separation from the cooked caseine. I have seen where butter would settle in the seams and cavities of cheese, to the almost utter ruination of the product and the distraction of the maker because he could not discern and stop the cause. There are many causes, some of which are beyond the power of the maker to remedy, such as churning the milk in drawing it to the factory over stony roads, etc. But he can prevent too high heat at setting time, and he can manipulate milk with gentleness before the rennet is added.

In consigning cheese to market always put the consignor’s name on the side instead of one cover of the box. Covers are apt to come off in transit and get mixed with those of other consignments, entailing much trouble to those concerned.

When coagulated milk has reached the right consistency to cut up, draw the curd knife through it at a moderate speed, truly and unwaveringly. The cutting behind an experienced hand will expel whey clear and green in color. In this item of procedure let your hand be counted among the experienced.

POTENT MAXIMS FOR THE CHEESE MAKER.

Keep a perfectly sweet, clean vat and spotless, shining apparatus and utensils.

Make an olfactory test of every mess of milk before it is dumped into the weighing can, and reject all that is tainted, unclean or tending toward the sour, as by the acceptance of such injured milk you damage your own trade reputation, detract from the dividend of every patron who furnishes perfect milk and irreparably wrong every consumer of the cheese.

Insist on each one of your patrons straining their milk through a fine cloth strainer of double thickness, and use the same yourself for it to pass through into the vat.

In heating up your milk to a temperature to meet a reception of the rennet, stir it frequently and gently.

Never set above 86° Fahrenheit in spring and fall and 84° in summer.

Remember that too high heat before setting separates the butter globules from the milk structure and that they are subsequently lost in the whey.

Use nothing but stone jars for keeping rennet. If a mess of rennet worth, perhaps, a dollar should get slightly tainted, throw it away rather than impregnate it through $200 worth of cheese and cause serious illness among numerous human beings.

Use only annottoine cut directly from the seed by the chemical action of potash.

The imputation that urine is used in the paste preparation should make every manufacturer shun it with loathing until the vile stigma is disproved.

Be at least five minutes in stirring the rennet into milk. Stir it with great gentleness, so that the butter globules will not be displaced.

Curd should stand not less than forty or more than sixty minutes after the application of rennet before cutting, the variation in time to be governed by season, condition of milk and desired keeping qualities. Curd is fit to cut up when it will split clean before the finger but is not so brittle as to break before the advancing knife. Cut first with the horizontal knife lengthways, then crossway, then lengthways with the perpendicular blade. If milk is very ripe, and a quick scald is necessary, cut once more crossway with the perpendicular blade. Never slash curd in cutting, as it starts milky whey and lowers your yield.

After cutting curd if milk is in normal condition, it is, perhaps, better to agitate the curd gently for a few moments before heat is applied. If milk has already taken on acid, apply heat immediately after cutting. In agitating curd use the hands for the first fifteen minutes, then manipulate it with a rake.

Stir only enough to keep it separated and prevent it from scorching on the hot bottom of the vat.

Remember that cooking curd thoroughly is, without doubt, the most important part of the whole programme of cheese making.

Do not place sole reliance on thermometer figures—let your judgment rule supreme above that. See that every day’s curd—the product of milk in all stages of maturity—does not part with the whey until it is cooked to a state of contractibility in which the cubes will separate by expansion after pressure by squeezing in the hand. No maker considers his bread free from rawness until it has received a certain amount of heat in the oven, and no cheese maker can expect to get a mellow, firm cheese unless he cooks his curd as above described. By using the smallest amount of heat possible to cook curd within a reasonable time, a finer quality of cheese is secured and a better yield.

Hold curd in the whey until it will string fine threads, one-fourth of an inch in length, on the hot iron.

Aim to have the whey well drained out of the curd before it is ground. Do not grind curd when it is too hot. If necessary, cut into small blocks or strips and scatter over the bottom of the vat, to cool to a temperature to about 85° Fahrenheit before grinding.

Cheese makers should not be too much wedded to fixed rules. For instance, do not always hold curd in the whey until it shows a quarter of an inch of acid by the iron simply because it may be a rule. Let your judgment rise supreme over all rules. Frequently, through the summer there are cool nights when the milk keeps so sweet that the next day no acid will show by the time you have the curd thoroughly cooked. At such times, as an experiment, draw off the whey sweet and let the curd develop acid in the pack. For your particular locality, quality of milk and character of feed, such a method may produce finer cheese than if soured in the whey, and it may not. You must test all of these little details to find out.

Two pounds of salt and the fractional parts of a third pound, up to sixteen ounces per 1,000 pounds of milk, covers the cheese maker’s scale for the season in this department. As a rule, two pounds in the spring, with a gradual ascendancy in quantity as the apex of hot weather approaches, and then a declination in quantity toward fall, is about the average amount used per 1,000 pounds of milk for the Cheddar process. There are more makers who do not salt above two and a half pounds in hot weather than there are who use three pounds. High salting retards curing, and the object now is to get a new cheese onto the market as quickly as possible. With a wet curd salt a little more than the rule by which you are running, so as to make up the loss that goes out with the whey.

CHEESE FOR THE BRITISH MARKET.

This quality of goods, generally known as “shipping cheese,” is made by the same process that we have described in this book with the exception that it is, or should be, worked down more. “Worked down” implies that a firmer cheese is produced, one cooked more, salted a trifle higher and soured more. These requisites lend a cheese body and prolong its keeping qualities. With all this, it must be mellow, close textured and fine flavored. The English consumer wants such a cheese, or he wants none. “A word to the wise is sufficient.”

SKIMMED CHEESE.

Making edible skimmed cheese is an effort to supply a constituent for the product that does not exist, namely, oleaginous matter. The butter or cream in milk is what gives rich flavor and mellow body to cheese. When a part or whole of this is removed by the skimmer, the depleted fluid, if manufactured into cheese, just as that containing all of the cream would be, will make dry, tasteless stuff. Skimmed cheese must be cooked, soured and salted less than full cream. Flat skims can often be scalded at 93° and 94° Fahrenheit. But, of course, this must be governed entirely by the rules relating to thorough cooking.

FLOATING CURD.

Floating curd emanates from the rankest known species of tainted milk. The curd is surfeited with offensive, poisonous gas, that holds in check the acid and will inhabit the curd until its life has died out. All the cheese maker can do is to wait patiently until its existence has ended and the curd, ceasing to be inflative, develops acid. Then grind and salt the usual amount, airing by thorough stirring for an hour or more, with doors and windows open, to expel the taint. Let it sour in the pack. If ground and salted before gas has left it, the cheese will huff up like puff balls.

BOXING CHEESE FOR MARKET.

After the cheese designed for shipment are selected, examine every one and look to it that there are no surface shortcomings; if there are, the discrepancy must be remedied. Aim to have the cheese go into the package neat and attractive in appearance. A firm, elastic rind, well oiled, and a spotless bandage cloth, if forming the cuticle of a squarely-built, well-shaped cheese, is all in the line of the appearance that is desired by dealers and retailers. In weighing the cheese, give good up weight, taking no account of anything less than a pound. Use the best quality of scale boards and boxes obtainable, and have the latter fit the cheese snugly. After a cheese is weighed, place a scale board on the top end and shove a box onto it. Flop box and cheese over and, as the latter settles into the case, mark the weight on the side of the box. If the box is too high, shave the rim down to the cheese surface and place on a scale board and then cover. It is imperative that the covers fit tightly and snugly, and that any superfluous rim on the box be shaved off. No cheese is properly prepared for transportation unless it is so tight in the box that it cannot shift and knock about. Brand the boxes in a neat, workman-like manner, having the lettering show plainly and distinctly. Then your cheese are ready for the freight car or the vessel’s hold.

Cheese are often slightly mouldy on their bandaged sides when cured in damp, warm weather. To obviate this, when boxing, rub the sides thoroughly with a dry, soft cloth and do not box until just before shipping. No cheese should be placed in boxes in hot weather until a few hours before transportation. Standing for several days in tight packages and exposed to a high temperature, will not only try the quality of cheese but will positively injure the flavor of the very best. If they could all go to their destination in refrigerator cars, this evil would be greatly ameliorated. With the facilities at hand, however, aim to place them on the market in as neat a shape as they rested on your curing room shelves.

THE HOT IRON TEST.

I do not know what cheese makers would do nowadays without the hot iron to guide them in evenly maturing curd. It is one of the most essential attributes of making. It should, of course, be most judiciously used.

In 1845, Mr. L. M. Norton, of Goshen, Conn., discovered that the acid in curd could be gauged by stringing threads from a heated iron. He kept the discovery a secret for a long time but at last divulged it.

To supply yourself with a handy instrument for testing acid, take a three-quarter inch bar of iron a foot long and set one end into a ferrule on a wooden handle. It can then be conveniently handled without burning the fingers. Heat the metal a little hotter than desired and then thrust for a moment into a bucket of water, to thoroughly clean the surface. Holding it in the left hand, take a piece of curd squeezed dry of whey and press against the iron. If it does not adhere at all, the curd is perfectly sweet, no matter how it may smell to you. If it clings slightly, you may be assured that acid is beginning to develop, so keep close watch of it. Curd ought never to string out threads more than one-fourth of an inch long before whey is drawn, and oftentimes less is desirable.

Have the iron at just the right temperature or you cannot make an accurate test. A right temperature implies that the iron is so hot that the curd will fry around the edges when pressed against it, but not so hot that it will scorch over.

Tainted and floating curds will often string threads six inches and more in length, and then not be fitted to grind and salt. As soon as acid has overcome the gaseous condition of such curd so that the inflation will subside, it is ready to grind, but not before. Cheese makers should not be afraid of souring and airing such curd too much.

MILK.

In the manufacture of cheese the constituents of milk demand our first attention, as we cannot intelligently study a subject without investigating its primary principles. Cow’s milk contains:

Water 864 parts.
Nitrogenous matter (caseine and albumen) 43 ”
Sugar of milk 52 ”
Fat 37 ”
Mineral salts 4 ”
—————
1,000

The solids represented above are in the form of minute globules, and the serum in which they float is the water or “whey.” It is to unite these globules and separate them from the whey that is the primary function of cheese making. It so happens that rennet, the active agent in this process, besides exerting an automatic, chemical action on milk, imparts to the solids new and vigorous properties that give cheese a medicinal value to the human stomach, namely, an inceptor of digestion. It is imperative that a cheese maker understands enough about milk to instantly detect the slightest change from its sweet, pure, normal condition. Milk as a fluid is highly sensitive to unclean odors, and when it absorbs them in a greater or less degree, the maker should, by an olfactory test, discover the taint. Milk that has been tainted by a retention of the animal heat, not having been cooled when freshly drawn, will give off a rank, burned smell, nauseous in the extreme. If the taint was absorbed from odors, the peculiar scent of the particular stench will be indelibly impressed on the fluid. Mature or sour milk is more to be desired for cheese manufacture than milk poisoned by taint. In fact, a _slight_ maturity of milk is necessary—or, at least, desirable—to produce a fine cheese, the same as mature cream is required to develop good butter, only in the former the “ripeness” must be scarcely perceptible, while in the latter it must be well advanced. All tainted milk, and all milk that is “old” and nearly sour, should be unconditionally rejected at the cheese factory for manufacture. Do not be afraid of financially losing by such a rule. It is none too stringent, and in the end it will give your goods a trade reputation that will be secure and impregnable. The idea that really good cheese can be made out of poor milk is disproved by chemistry and common sense.

SALT.

One of the most important factors in cheese making is the saline mineral known as salt. A cheese can be manufactured gilt-edged in every way, but if it contains no salt, an insufficient quantity of it or that which is of weak, inferior quality, it is simply a mass of perishable, nitrogenous matter that will soon go to putrefaction. Salt checks the growth of the lactic acid as quickly as a rush of air snuffs out a candle; therefore, it has complete control over the quality of the cheese in this direction. It preserves that quality for an indefinite time, provided it exists in a sufficient proportion and the cheese has been scientifically made. Then, again, salt gives firmness and flavor to the cheese.

Thus, perceiving that cheese, as a component of human food, could not exist without salt, the analogy between the purity of that article and the fine quality of cheese is at once apparent. It is needless to advise the use of nothing but a fine, pure grade of salt for savoring cheese. Perhaps, instead of needless, it is _needful_ to admonish manufacturers in this regard. I regret to say that I have observed many who held false ideas of economy about so cheap an article as this briny product. A difference of twenty-five cents on a barrel would turn their judgment in favor of the cheaper, coarser article, and, while really the losers thereby, they would feel complacent over a supposed gain.

It is just such little slights as this—substituting poor for good salt—that help make up the discrepancy in quality already perceptible in American cheese. The dairymen of this country possess the most advantageous position of any class of dairymen in the world. For years their milch cattle have been bred toward the extinction of beef characteristics, and toward the fostering and enlargement of lacteal tendencies, until now, in point of blood, the general average is high. Intelligence, skilled labor and ingenuity are at command and should so leaven the products of our dairies that they should stand above all competitors. Then, why be “Penny wise and pound foolish,” when so grand a prize as national trade reputation is at stake? Cheese manufacturers, employ only the most experienced and careful help obtainable, and be willing to pay them liberally for their services. Look only to _the quality_ of your cheese and let the ratio take care of itself. No matter if it takes eleven or twelve pounds of milk to produce a pound of cheese, provided that cheese is gilt-edged in every particular. Use nothing but first-class material, from the rennet, coloring matter and salt that goes into the cheese to the scale board and the box that covers it. Let the foreign demand wane if it wants to—we know how to relish good cheese here at home just as well as our English brothers, and, in the future, we are going to consume more of the product _per capita_, too.

HOME-MADE CHEESE.

Exhaustive rules for manufacturing cheese on a small scale at home occasionally go the rounds of the agricultural press. Some of them contain ideas of real merit and some do not. All middle-aged people who have in younger days lived in localities where dairying reached even modest pretensions can recall the sweet-savored cheese room, an adjunct of the kitchen, whose furnishing of primitive milk utensils was then considered ample for the housewife’s use. Associated dairies or factories soon came upon the stage, and their vast superiority of method, coupled with the adoption of the cheddar system, marked an era in cheese improvement, which said in effect, if not in words, that “home dairy cheese must go.” The innovation of factories undermined and swept out of existence this small fry of amateur production, because home dairymen would not or could not adopt the cheddar improvement and manipulate their milk with skilled labor. Dairies associated together under factory regime facilitated such an easy and quick disposal of one’s milk, and at such a greatly enhanced profit, that the obvious convenience and economy of the new order of things, more than any inimical characteristic it possessed, pulled down the one and set up the other. It matters not, though, to consumers in America or England, whether the cheese they eat is made under the roof of a farm house on a small scale, or in a mammoth factory on a large one, provided the quality is good. But there are serious drawbacks about making up milk in diminutive quantity that are hard to overcome. Let us discuss them and analyze their leading features:

I think it is safe to assume that not one person out of fifty who attempts to make home dairy cheese to-day but will manufacture it just as his fathers did fifty years ago. In their minds the whole process is covered by coagulation of the milk, quick cooking of the curd, salting it and pressing it. There is no thought of having the milk moderately mature, the curd thoroughly cooked and then properly soured, and the salt judiciously applied. The amateur knows nothing about the fine yet necessary points of manufacture, and so his cheese lacks the fine but requisite points of quality to insure it trade recognition. We all like good cheese to eat, but in this country, thanks to the skimmer, it is getting so that the good article is very scarce and promises to be scarcer if the skimmer’s relations with the factory are not soon done away with.

A great many readers who live in non-cheese manufacturing districts appreciate mellow, rich cheese when they sometimes at long intervals find it on their groceryman’s counter, and vow that they would eat the article more if the price was cheapened and the general quality raised. You should, if you live a hundred miles or so from any factory, and if you have a few cows and your neighbor has a few more, club together and make up some cheese for your own use. You have a vivid remembrance of how your mother used to manage it years ago. Discard the wooden tub that she used, for now we have tin vessels that are far preferable. Get two or three hundred pounds of milk together, if possible, but do not rob it of a bit of cream—keep that well worked into the fluid. Have a heavy bottomed tin box with round corners, made at the tinner’s, one that is so shaped that it will fit into a large caldron kettle and yet leave a couple of inches of space between its outside surface and the iron sides of the kettle. This space is for water, which should be used as the best conductor to raise the temperature of the milk. Set the kettle in a brick or stone arch, in which kindle a slow fire. With the tin vessel filled with milk, and water about it in the way described, you have a cheese vat in miniature. Have a thermometer handy. Stir the milk often and do not let it get above 85° before setting. Draw the fire out before it has fairly reached that temperature, as the after heat will raise it a degree or two. Do not trust to your knowledge of the strength of rennet. Buy some Rennetine and carefully follow directions as to the amount necessary to coagulate 100 pounds of milk. Work the rennet in thoroughly and then cover the little “vat” up with a piece of sheeting. It is very important to have just enough rennet as too much or too little will spoil the cheese. Have your tinner make you two curd knives, one with perpendicular and the other with horizontal blades. When the coagulated milk will break squarely over the finger, and whey begins to start around the edges, cut it quite finely with the knives, using first the perpendicular and then the horizontal one. Raise the temperature slowly, not to 100° or 110°, but to a point where the curd is thoroughly cooked but not to dryness. Stir the curd and whey up at frequent intervals to keep it from packing. Do not hustle it into the press now just because you have it cooked, unless it is sour. Remember that the curd must mature, or, in other words, generate acid. Therein lies the future good quality of the cheese. Do not rely on your olfactory sense to gauge the sourness. Press a little piece of the curd against a hot iron. When it pulls out strings one-half of an inch long in spring, one inch long in midsummer and one-half inch in fall, it is sour enough to be salted. Have the whey all dipped off and the curd drained before it has reached a maturity sufficient to salt. Do not salt in hot weather higher than one-fourth of a pound to a hundred pounds of milk, and in spring and fall less. As you have, at the most, only a little curd to manipulate, do not let it get cold but put it in the hoop at a temperature of at least 75°. Do not try to save over curd for another batch the next day. Better have two twenty-pound cheese in two days than one forty-pounder during the same time. You cannot graft new curd onto old without lowering the quality of the whole. After you have a curd in the hoop do not try to press it with stone weights because there is so little of it. Have a small press frame and a screw for that purpose. These small cheese will cure quickly. Keep the ends well oiled, and lay them on a shelf in a warm room, where they should be turned and rubbed every day.

The foregoing pointers are intended for persons who have some previous knowledge of making dairy cheese, and, therefore, minute details of explanation have not been given. The trouble with most home dairy makers is that they do not realize the importance of souring the curd, and so make weak, off-flavored, perishable stock.

OCTOBER CHEESE.

How are we to make as good cheese in October as we have been turning out in September? This is the mental query that will sometimes arise in the minds of makers whose experience is not measured by length of years. A one-twelfth turn of the wheel of the yearly chronological table ought not to produce such a vast change in lacteal affairs as to exert a radical change in the manufacturing process. Of course, the artificial subdivisions of the season would be of but small moment in the case if they were not to a certain extent analogous to natural atmospheric changes. As September wanes into October the summer is insidiously but surely attaining its maturity. The grass roots having in a prolific manner fulfilled their annual mission, fail to send forth the tender blade of earlier months. Blighting frosts sear the pastures and sap the succulence from the feed. It is but natural that such an alteration in climatic influence should leave its effect on the milk. It is a maxim of cheese making that you must work milk according to its condition, not expecting one invariable rule to cover the whole science, but keeping in mind numberless distinct methods of treatment, for instant application as exigencies arise.

As a general thing, less acid is deemed necessary for the October make than was applied to the September product. I believe that in making this important change the majority of manufacturers are too abrupt in method and reduce the standard of ripeness prematurely in point of time. A certain amount of acid is necessary to impart flavor and insure good keeping qualities, hence more of it is required in hot weather than in cold, as a defense against high temperature. Many think that as soon as the hot days are passed the need of an advanced curd maturity is passed also, and make almost sweet cheese. If there is any thing that is fraught with dire consequences in cheese making, it is extremes practiced in the _modus operandi_. Avoid anything so derogatory and let conservatism characterize your movements. Despite seasons and weather, and climate, we have got to apply just so much acid to cheese to make it palatable and mellow, and if the product is liable to encounter crucial weather enough more sourness to retain the flavor established is imperative. But what weakens fall goods is that in decreasing the acid scale in view of cold weather ahead the retrograde is pushed beyond its own needs and infringes on the quality of the cheese. In their zeal to have the standard just right, I have known old makers to produce a lot of weak October cheese before they realized where the trouble was. Better have a little fullness of acid on fall stock than not enough. “Doctor, why is it that you always buy a late fall cheese for winter family use?” was asked one of the medical fraternity by a factory employee as he delivered a forty pounder at his door. “We have in my estimation far better goods on the shelves made in August and September, and the price is the same.” “Well, you see, young man,” said the Doctor, pouring some quinine into a vial, “I have a notion that late fall cheese is healthier; the milk is no richer, perhaps, than in September but the air is cool and pure, and, of course, you know what a debilitating effect heat waves and miasmatic atmospheric currents have on milk. Well, the less poison there is in the air, the less there will be in the milk and subsequently in the cheese, consequently my choice.” I believe the man of pills argued in the right direction there, but then there is happily a way of expunging from the curd infections absorbed by the milk from the atmosphere, namely, airing.

The most diabolical enemy of October cheese is the skimmer. In factories where that is unused there is a clear field for developing fine stock, but there is no concealing the fact that all attempts to smooth over the impoverishing effects of its use by the most skilled treatment are futile and unavailing. If all of the good endeavor to make mellow, rich cheese out of substance that is but dross was expended in divorcing the illegitimate union of creamery and cheese factory, incalculable benefit would accrue to dairy interests.

This month avoid cold draughts through the make-room during the scalding process, as a vat presents a large surface for a current of air to exert a chilling effect upon. Be sure and cook the curd enough. There is a vast amount of fall made cheese that comes to grief through insufficient scalding. If you do not bake a loaf of bread thoroughly, you have a doughy and unpalatable article of food, and if curd is not cooked until it has passed the raw state, it will retain a certain quantity of whey and damage the product on the shelves. This is the cause of strong-flavored, flabby-textured cheese. A gentleman of long experience in the trade has said: “The truth is, as it is difficult to cure cheese in cold weather, it ought to be cooked more than will answer in hot weather, and sour less, as the tendency is to acidulation in a cool atmosphere, in consequence of the moisture not drying out soon enough.” To this we can append the suggestion of never trying to cure a cheese in a cool atmosphere, for the result will be a failure. A cheese cannot help but grow old in a cold room but it will never cure.

A SIGNIFICANT REPORT.

A recent issue of the Utica _Herald_ contains the following:

A New York gentleman, who has recently returned from Liverpool,
writes to a friend in this city and reports the situation healthy
on the other side, but says New York State cheese are done for
as far as fine cheese goes. It is the same old trouble we have
mentioned time and again, too much cheese to the pound of milk—no
body. Canada, and even New Zealand, are taking the trade of fine
cheese from the States. Our factory men will wake up to the fact
some day and find their goods are only second class. In fact, it is
about so now. New York State cheese sell under Canada all the way
from ½ @ 1c. a pound. We have preached this a long while but it is
beginning to be realized now. This accounts for the large shipments
from Canada during the last two months, and the small ones from
here.

Cheese industry is not yet of sufficient magnitude to exert any marked influence on the European markets, but as the dairy industry is constantly expanding here, and the State’s product must stand on its own merits, it behooves manufacturers to avoid the pit that their brothers of the Empire State have inadvertently stumbled into. We consume a large amount of cheese here at home, and why are not our stomachs as worthy to be catered to as are the digestive receptacles of our English cousins across the pond? Yet there is no alarm in cheese circles as to deteriorated quality until British buyers find something that suits them better and for which they are willing to pay more. Truly cheese-eating New Yorkers are a very patient people. We have before us the file of a leading American cheese report of 1868—twenty years ago. It says: “We are behind the Canadians as regards firmness, but ahead of them in point of flavor. The same relation exists between American and Swedish cheese; also, between American and English cheese, and other European makes, with the exception of a few of the best English brands, which are equal if not superior to our finest grades, as regards flavor, and superior in fineness and firmness of texture.” This was America’s prestige a score of years ago. Why has it not been sustained? The cause is clear to the most obdurate. Producers supposed their cheese supreme in the English markets and have been abusing an established trade reputation with impunity. Their folly is now apparent, and the question naturally arises, Will they play the role of the prodigal son and return to a path of trade rectitude? That implies that the banns that unite the creamery and the cheese factory be irrevocably severed—send the skimmer higher than Gilroy’s kite, as it were. The American people can appreciate good cheese just as well as the English. We want good butter, too, but not at the cost of the cheese quality. That is not necessary, and a few years ago we did not deem it so, either. Why should there be a tendency in that direction now? We are now better equipped in every department to send out better cheese than we did in 1868, yet notice the difference in the two reports quoted. We are better equipped, because we have more scientific appliances for handling milk. Our milk is better, because the pastures are improved, and a finer grade of stock feeds upon them. Makers of to-day who rely on the accumulated cheese wisdom handed down through two decades of experience should be rich enough in knowledge to at least not retrograde from the standard of 1868. Let us for one moment lay reform in the tariff, and reform in the civil service on the table and talk, think and act about reform in cheese. Michigan always takes a front seat when reformation of any kind is agitated. We are satisfied she will not take a back seat now. There has probably not been such a tendency in this State as in other localities to rob milk at both ends and on the sides before it is suffered to coagulate in cheese, but let us smother what infection there is before it becomes an established blight on the Wolverine product. We are satisfied that our dairymen are alive to their interests here, and will not drift away from safe anchorage. A shipping cheese requires more body, or, in other words, more acid and firmness than a cheese designed for home consumption. This is partly due to the fact that such a quality is demanded by European consumers and partly because an ocean voyage necessitates it. It takes more milk to make such cheese, and less milk to produce the softer and more perishable home trade goods. In thrusting the cheaper article on the foreign market, New Yorkers have staked a hazardous venture and lost. Nothing is said about the skimmer, but it gets in its insidious work all the same—not under full cream brands, probably. We do not insinuate that, but the markets are crowded with night and flat skims, occupying space that should be filled with richer goods. Skims are sent over to England when they really want full cream. Canada and New Zealand step in with a fine quality of the latter brand, and they take it even in preference to the States’ best offering. We hold skimmed cheese greatly responsible for the trade depression under which the American article is now laboring. It is high time that the dry, hard stuff was known no more in all the earth.

PREPARED RENNET AND COLOR.

The value to the cheese trade of scientifically prepared rennet and annotto color cannot be over estimated. Rennet extract, and one quality annottoine, are not in general use, but they should be. With the home prepared infusion of both articles, we have a thousand diverse shades of quality and degrees of strength, and, worst of all, they are often applied to the milk, hit or miss. The result is unevenness in cheese quality and color, where there should be perfect uniformity. We advise all makers to renounce as fast as practicable the old, often unsatisfactory method of soaking rennet skins, and steeping annotto seed, and adopt reliably prepared extracts of these essential cheese ingredients.

CHEESE THAT HUFF.