Part 6

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.

A good, properly manufactured cheese will never huff up on the surface, or swell the bandage to the point of protuberance. Cheese often huff slightly when curing, and afterward flatten into a smooth, firm surface, but they are never No. 1 stock. The writer can remember fifteen years back when makers did not understand working gaseous curds as they do now. Sales and shipments were far between then, and cheese accumulated in great numbers in factories. It was no uncommon thing in the years ’73 and ’74, in passing through a curing room containing 500 or 600 cheese, to find a large percentage of the umber covered with immense blisters, that held in retention offensive smelling gases. Every day the maker would lance these unhealthy swellings with a wire or goose quill, only to have them shortly after bulge out in another place. Besides these partially affected cheese, there were often days’ makes of those that would huff all over, swell out like huge puff balls till a slight jar would have rolled them from the shelves. These were the product of floating curds with the gas all left in. A decade and a half ago farmers did not take the same care of their milk that they do now. They were not versed in dairy literature to any extent, and did not see the importance of speedily expelling animal heat from milk or of always furnishing their cows with wholesome drinking water. Hence, tainted milk was more often the rule than the exception. With the present bettered quality of milk and the improved skill of makers in handling it, inflative cheese ought to now be foreign to the curing room. Bad taints are at present seldom met with, but slight ones creep in unawares, unless the maker is vigilant, and then it is his business to eradicate the ill-savor. Sour until acid has completely overcome the gas, grind twice, and give the curd a prolonged airing by frequent stirring. Try the prolonged stirring on common curds that are hot—too hot to go immediately to press—and notice how it will enhance the flavor of the cheese.