Milch Cows and Dairy Farming / Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

by Charles Louis Flint

Dunlop Cheese

The Dunlop Cheese, the most celebrated of Scotland, had its origin in Ayrshire, from which it was sent to the Glasgow market, and from which the manufacture soon spread to Lanark, Renfrew, and other adjoining counties. It is manufactured, according to Aiton, in the following manner: When the cows on a farm are not so numerous as to yield milk sufficient to make a cheese every time they are milked, the milk is stored about six or eight inches deep in the coolers, and placed in the milk-house until as much is collected as will form a cheese of a proper size. When the cheese is to be made, the cream is skimmed from the milk in the coolers, and, without being heated, is, with the milk that is drawn from the cows at the time, passed through the sieve into the curd-vat. The cold milk from which the cream has been taken is heated so as to raise the temperature of the whole mass to near blood heat; and the whole is coägulated by the means of rennet carefully mixed with the milk. The cream is put into the curd-vat, that its oily parts may not be melted, and the skimmed milk is heated sufficient to raise the whole to near animal heat.

It may be said that the utmost care is always taken to keep the milk, in all stages of the operation, free not only from every admixture or impurity, but also from being hurt by foul air arising from acidity in any milky substance, putrid water, the stench of the barn, dunghill, or any other substance; and likewise to prevent the milk from becoming sour, which, when it happens, greatly injures the cheese. Great care is taken to prevent any of the butyraceous or oily matter in the cream from being melted in any stage of the process. To cool the milk, and to facilitate the separation or rising of the cream, a small quantity of clean cold water is generally mixed with the milk in each cooler. The coägulum is formed in from ten to fifteen minutes, and nobody would use rennet twice that required more than twenty minutes or half an hour to form a curd. Whenever the milk is completely coägulated the curd is broken, in order to let the serum or whey be separated and taken off. Some break the curd slightly at first, by making cross-scores with a knife or a thin piece of wood, at about one or two inches distant, and intersecting each other at right angles; and these are renewed still more closely after some of the whey has been discharged. Others break the whole curd more minutely at once with the hand or the skimmer.

After the curd has been broken, the whey ought to be taken off as speedily as it can be done, and with as little further breaking or handling the curd as possible. It is necessary, however, to turn the curd, cut it with a knife, or break it gently with the hand.

When the curd has consolidated a little, it is cut with the cheese-knife, slightly at first, and more minutely as it hardens, so as to bring off the whey. When the greater part of the whey has been extracted, the curd is taken up from the curd-boyn, and, being cut into pieces of about two inches in thickness, it is placed in a sort of vat or sieve with many holes. A lid is placed upon it, and a slight pressure, say from three to four stone avoirdupois; and the curd is turned up and cut small every ten or fifteen minutes, and occasionally pressed with the hand so long as it continues to discharge scrum. When no more whey can be drawn off by these means, the curd is cut as small as possible with the knife, the proper quantity of salt minutely mixed into it in the curd-boyn, and placed in the chessart within a shift of thin canvas, and put under the press.

All these operations ought to be carried on and completed with the least possible delay, and yet without precipitation. The sooner the whey is removed after the coägulation of the milk, so much the better. But, if the curd is soft, from being set too cold, it requires more time, and to be more gently dealt with, as otherwise much of the curd and of the fat would go off with the whey; and when the curd has been formed too hot, the same caution is necessary. Precipitation, or handling the curd too roughly, would add to its toughness, and expel still more of the oily matter; and, as has been already mentioned, hot water or whey should be put on the curd when it is soft and cold, and cold water when the curd is set too hot.

Undue delay, however, in any of these operations, from the time the milk is taken out of the coolers until the curd is under the press in the shape of a cheese, is most improper, as the curd in all these stages is, when neglected for even a few minutes, very apt to become ill-flavored. If it is allowed to remain too long in the curd-vat, or in the dripper over it, before the whey is completely extracted, the curd becomes too cold, and acquires a pungent or acrid taste; or, it softens so much that the cheese is not sufficiently adhesive, and does not easily part with the serum. Whenever the curd is completely set, the whey should be taken off without delay; and the dairymaid should never leave the curd-boyn until the curd is ready for the dripper or cheese-vat. The salt is mixed into the curd.

After the cheese is put into the press, it remains for the first time about an hour, or less than two hours, until it is taken out, turned upside down in the cheese-vat, and a new cloth put around it every four or six hours until the cheese is completed, which is generally in the course of a day and a half, two, or at most in three days after it was first put under the press.

Some have shortened the process of pressing by placing the cheese—after it has been under the press for two hours or so for the first time—into water heated to about one hundred or one hundred and ten degrees, and allowing the cheese to remain in the water about the space of half an hour, and thereafter drying it with a cloth, and putting it again under the press.

When taken from the press, generally after two or three days from the time they were first placed under it, they are exposed for a week or so to the warmth and heat of the farmer’s kitchen,—not to excite sweating, but merely to dry them a little before they are placed in the store, where a small proportion of heat is admitted. While they remain in the kitchen they are turned over three or four times every day; and, whenever they begin to harden a little on the outside, they are laid up on the shelves of the store, where they are turned over once a day or once in two days for a week or so, until they are dry, and twice every week afterwards.

The store-houses for cheese in Scotland are in proportion to the size of the dairy,—generally a small place adjoining the milk-house, or in the end of the barn or other buildings, where racks are placed, with as many shelves as can hold the cheeses made in the season. When no particular place is prepared, the racks are placed in the barn, which is generally empty during summer; or some lay the cheeses on the floor of a garret over some part of their dwelling-house.

Wherever the cheeses are stored, they are not sweated or put into a warm place, but kept cool, in a place in a medium state, between damp and dry, without the sun being allowed to shine on them, or yet a great current of air admitted. Too much air, or the rays of the sun, would dry the cheeses too fast, diminish their weight, and make them crack; and heat would make them sweat or perspire, which extracts the fat, and tends to induce hooving. But when they are kept in a temperature nearly similar to that of a barn, the doors of which are not much open, and but a moderate current of air admitted, the cheeses are kept in a proper shape,—neither so dry as to rend the skin, nor so damp as to render them mouldy on the outside; and no partial fermentation is excited, but the cheese is preserved sound and good.