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

Stilton Cheese

The Stilton Cheese is by far the richest of the English dairies. This originated in a small town of that name, in Leicestershire. It possesses “a peculiar delicacy of flavor, a delicious mellowness, and a great aptness to acquire a species of artificial decay; without which, to the somewhat vitiated taste of lovers of Stilton cheese, as now eaten, it is not considered of prime account. To be in good order, according to the present standard of taste, it must be decayed, blue, and moist.” To suit this taste, an artificial mode is adopted, old and decayed cheese being introduced into the new, or port wine or ale added by means of tasters, or caulking-pins are stuck into them, and left till they rust and produce an appearance of decay in the cheese.

“It is commonly made by putting the night’s cream to the milk of the following morning with the rennet, great care being taken that the milk and the cream are thoroughly mixed together, and that they both have the proper temperature. The rennet should also be very pure and sweet. As soon as the milk is curdled, the whole of it is taken out, put into a sieve gradually to drain, and moderately pressed. It is then put into a case or box, of the form that it is intended to be; for, on account of its richness, it would separate and fall to pieces were not this precaution adopted. Afterwards it is turned every day on dry boards, cloth-binders being tied around it, which are gradually tightened as occasion requires. After it is removed from the box or hoop, the cheese must be closely bound with cloths and changed daily, until it becomes sufficiently compact to support itself. When these cloths are taken away, each cheese has to be rubbed over with a brush once every day. If the weather is moist or damp, this is done twice a day during two or three months. It is occasionally powdered with flour, and plunged into hot water. This hardens the outer coat and favors the internal fermentation, and thus produces what is called the ripening of the cheese. Sometimes it is made in a net like a cabbage-net, which gives it the form of an acorn.”

The maturity of Stilton cheeses is sometimes hastened by putting them in a bucket, and covering them over with horse-dung.