Part 4

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.