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

The Red Color of Edam Cheese.

—After the dairyman has sold his cheese to the merchant, it is colored by him quite red. It will not be uninteresting to many readers to know some of the details of this peculiar color.

Edam cheese is colored with what is called tournesol, which is extracted from a plant (Croton tinctorium). This is an annual, which grows wild in France, in great abundance, in the vicinity of Montpelier, in Languedoc; and around Aix, in Provence, large commons are sown with it. The seed is sown in March and April. From a white and straight tap root, it sends up a stalk something like six inches high, which divides into many branches. The leaves have very long stems, of a pale green color. The flower-stalks spring up from between the branches, and bear flowers in fan-shaped clusters. The vegetation of the plant continues four months.

The preparation of the tournesol is as follows: The plants are collected late in summer, the roots thrown away, and the other parts taken to a mill, where they are ground, and the juice pressed out. Into this juice the rags of old hempen cloth are dipped till they are soaked full, when they are hung up to dry in the sun. When they are dry they are laid on a tray over a tub filled with urine, in which carbonate of lime has been dissolved, so that the edges hang over the rim of the tub on which they rest. The vapor from the solution of lime must penetrate the rags, and this gives them a violet color, when they are taken off and dried again, to be replaced till they are fully colored.

The tournesol rags have become an article of commerce, for which France receives annually from Holland from 100,000 to 200,000 guilders (from $38,000 to $76,000).

To give the Edam cheeses the red rind, they are rubbed with these tournesol rags, from which they got the dark violet color; and after they are dried they are again rubbed, which gives them a glowing red.

It is an excellent peculiarity of the tournesol rags that they not only impart the color to Edam cheese, to which people abroad are so accustomed, but that they keep the insects from the cheese, whilst the coloring matter does not penetrate inside, but remains on the rind. Substitutes for it have been repeatedly sought, but not found; nor have the attempts made to grow the plant in Holland proved successful.