good cream cheese is fairly firm but mellow, with a slightly acid
yet very attractive flavour. It is the simplest of all cheese to
make—cream poured into a perforated box lined with loose
muslin practically makes itself into cheese in a few days’ time,
and is usually ripe in a week.
In France the pressed varieties of cheese with hard rinds include Gruyère, Cantal, Roquefort and Port Salut. The first-named, a pale-yellow cheese full of holes of varying size, is made in Switzerland and in the Jura Mountains district in the east of France; whilst Cantal cheese, which is of lower quality, is a product of the midland districts and is made barrel-shape. Roquefort cheese is made from the milk of ewes, which are kept chiefly as dairy animals in the department of Aveyron, and the cheese is cured in the natural mountain caves at the village of Roquefort. It is a small, rather soft, white cheese, abundantly veined with a greenish-blue mould and weighs between 4 and 5 ℔. The Port Salut is quite a modern cheese, which originated in the abbey of that name in Mayenne; it is a thin, flat cheese of characteristic, and not unattractive odour and flavour. The best known of the soft unpressed cheeses are Brie, Camembert and Coulommiers, whilst Pont l’Evêque, Livarot and other varieties are also made. After being shaped in moulds of various forms, these cheeses are laid on straw mats to cure, and when fit to eat they possess about the same consistency as butter. The Neufchâtel, Gervais and Bondon cheeses are soft varieties intended to be eaten quite fresh, like cream cheese.
Of the varieties of cheese made in Switzerland, the best known is the Emmenthaler, which is about the size of a cart-wheel, and has a weight varying from 150 to 300 ℔. It is full of small holes of almost uniform size and very regularly distributed. In colour and flavour it is the same as Gruyère. The Edam and Gouda are the common cheeses of Holland. The Edam is spherical in shape, weighs from 3 to 4 ℔, and is usually dyed crimson on the outside. The Gouda is a flat cheese with convex edges and is of any weight up to 20 ℔. Of the two, the Edam has the finer flavour. Limburger is the leading German cheese, whilst other varieties are the Backstein and Munster; all are strong-smelling. Parmesan cheese is an Italian product, round and flat, about 5 in. thick, weighing from 60 to 80 ℔ and possessed of fine flavour. Gorgonzola cheese, so called from the Italian town of that name near Milan, is made in the Cheddar shape and weighs from 20 to 40 ℔. When ripe it is permeated by a blue mould, and resembles in flavour, appearance and consistency a rich old Stilton.
For descriptions of all the named varieties of cheese, see Bulletin 105 of the Bureau of Animal Industry (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington), issued 27th of June 1908, compiled by C. F. Doane and H. W. Lawson.
Butter and Butter-Making
As with cheese, so with butter, large quantities of the latter have been inferior not because the cream was poor in quality, but because the wrong kinds of bacteria had taken possession of the atmosphere in hundreds of dairies. The greatest if not the latest novelty in dairying in the last decade of the 19th century was the isolation of lactic acid bacilli, their cultivation in a suitable medium, and their employment in cream preparatory to churning. Used thus in butter-making, an excellent product results, provided cleanliness be scrupulously maintained. The culture repeats itself in the buttermilk, which in turn may be used again with marked success. Much fine butter, indeed, was made long before the bearing of bacteriological science upon the practice of dairying was recognized—made by using acid buttermilk from a previous churning.
In Denmark, which is, for its size, the greatest butter-producing country in the world, most of the butter is made with the aid of “starters,” or artificial cultures which are employed in ripening the cream. Though the butter made by such cultures shows little if any superiority over a good sample made from cream ripened in the ordinary way—that is, by keeping the cream at a fairly high temperature until it is ready for churning, when it must be cooled—it is claimed that the use of these cultures enables the butter-makers of Denmark to secure a much greater uniformity in the quality of their produce than would be possible if they depended upon the ripening of the cream through the influence of bacteria taken up in the usual way from the air.
Butter-making is an altogether simpler process than cheese-making, but success demands strict attention to sound principles, the observance of thorough cleanliness in every stage of the work, and the intelligent use of the thermometer. The following rules for butter-making, issued by the Royal Agricultural Society sufficiently indicate the nature of the operation:—
Prepare churn, butter-worker, wooden-hands and sieve as follows:—(1) Rinse with cold water. (2) Scald with boiling water. (3) Rub thoroughly with salt. (4) Rinse with cold water.
Always use a correct thermometer.
The cream, when in the churn, to be at a temperature of 56° to 58° F. in summer and 60° to 62° F. in winter. The churn should never be more than half full. Churn at number of revolutions suggested by maker of churn. If none are given, churn at 40 to 45 revolutions per minute. Always churn slowly at first.
Ventilate the churn freely and frequently during churning, until no air rushes out when the vent is opened.
Stop churning immediately the butter comes. This can be ascertained by the sound; if in doubt, look.
The butter should now be like grains of mustard seed. Pour in a small quantity of cold water (1 pint of water to 2 quarts of cream) to harden the grains, and give a few more turns to the churn gently.
Draw off the buttermilk, giving plenty of time for draining. Use a straining-cloth placed over the hair-sieve, so as to prevent any loss, and wash the butter in the churn with plenty of cold water: then draw off the water, and repeat the process until the water comes off quite clear.
To brine butter, make a strong brine, 2 to 3 ℔ of salt to 1 gallon of water. Place straining-cloth over mouth of churn, pour in brine, put lid on churn, turn sharply half a dozen times, and leave for 10 to 15 minutes. Then lift the butter out of the churn into sieve, turn butter out on worker, leave it a few minutes to drain, and work gently till all superfluous moisture is pressed out.
To drysalt butter, place butter on worker, let it drain 10 to 15 minutes, then work gently till all the butter comes together. Place it on the scales and weigh; then weigh salt, for slight salting, 14 oz.; medium, 12 oz.; heavy salting, 34 oz. to the ℔ of butter. Roll butter out on worker and carefully sprinkle salt over the surface, a little at a time; roll up and repeat till all the salt is used.
Never touch the butter with your hands.
Well-made butter is firm and not greasy. It possesses a characteristic texture or “grain,” in virtue of which it cuts clean with a knife and breaks with a granular fracture, like that of cast-iron. Theoretically, butter should consist of little else than fat, but in practice this degree of perfection is never attained. Usually the fat ranges from 83 to 88%, whilst water is present to the extent of from 10 to 15%.[1] There will also be from 0.2 to 0.8% of milk-sugar, and from 0.5 to 0.8% of casein. It is the casein which is the objectionable ingredient, and the presence of which is usually the cause of rancidity. In badly-washed or badly-worked butter, from which the buttermilk has not been properly removed, the proportion of casein or curd left in the product may be considerable, and such butter has only inferior keeping qualities. At the same time, the mistake may be made of overworking or of overwashing the butter, thereby depriving it of the delicacy of flavour which is one of its chief attractions as an article of consumption if eaten fresh. The object of washing with brine is that the small quantity of salt thus introduced shall act as a preservative and develop the flavour. Streaky butter may be due either to curd left in by imperfect washing, or to an uneven distribution of the salt.
Equipment of the Dairy
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| Fig. 1.—Milking-Pail. | Fig. 2.—Milk Sieve. |
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| Fig. 3.—Rectangular Cheese-Vat. |
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| Fig. 4.—Cheese-Tub. |
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| Fig. 5.—Curd-Knives. |
The improved form of milking-pail shown in fig. 1 has rests or brackets, which the milker when seated on his stool places on his knees; he thus bears the weight on his thighs, and is entirely relieved of the strain involved in gripping the can between the knees. The milk sieve or strainer (fig. 2) is used to remove cow-hairs and any other mechanical impurity that may have fallen into the milk. A double straining surface is provided, the second being of very fine gauze placed vertically, so that the pressure of the milk does not force the dirt through; the strainer is easily washed. The cheese tub or vat receives
- ↑ Market butter is sometimes deliberately over-weighted with water, and a fraudulent profit is obtained by selling this extra moisture at the price of butter.
