CHEESE AS AN APPETIZER.
While there is but one way to make perfect butter there are many ways to make perfect cheese. Butter is always butter, varying only in the degree of palatability, whereas from a pail of milk can be made hundreds of varieties of cheese, each perfect in its way. Every country has its own, differing from those of other countries and provinces, as the costumes and customs differ. The chief difference lies in the Flavor, and this is due to a variety of causes, one of them being the source of the milk. The Laplander makes several kinds of cheese from reindeer milk, while in some parts of Italy buffalo cheese is eaten. Goat cheese is diversely made in Germany, France, Italy and other countries, while for some of the finest cheeses, including genuine Roquefort, sheep supply the milk. By far the most important animal, however, is the cow.
What would Europeans and Americans do without the cow? It is possible to get along without her. When I visited Japan, less than a quarter of a century ago, the first experiments in the production of milk, butter, and cheese were being made in the Hokkaido, with a herd of fifty imported cows.[14] The courtesy of the Governor-General enabled me to test the products, and I found them very good. But owing to scant and expensive pasturage, Japanese epicures will never be able to depend much on cows; and think what they miss! No veal, no beef, no suet, no cream, no butter, no cheese! Think of the endless uses we make of these, alone, or in thousands of culinary combinations!
Nevertheless, we still have much to learn concerning the diverse uses to which at least one of the products of the protean milk pail can be put. We make above 300,000,000 pounds of cheese a year, worth over $30,000,000; but there is less to boast about its quality than its quantity. We are strangely monotonous and unoriginal. About three-fourths of our cheese is an imitation of the English Cheddar, while the rest consists mostly of imitations—generally very poor ones—of Swiss, Dutch, Italian, or German cheeses, or the French Camembert, Roquefort, and so on. Have we no gastronomic imagination? Shall we permit not only the epicures but the peasants of Europe to look down on us for our lack of it? We have, to be sure, a few specialties, such as the Pineapple, the Brick, Isigny, and some special varieties of cream cheese; but for a nation of nearly a hundred millions, we make a very poor showing indeed in this branch of gastronomy, as in so many others.
To a patriotic epicure it is humiliating to peruse Bulletin 105 of the Bureau of Animal Industry, entitled Varieties of Cheese. It contains, on 72 pages, descriptions and analyses of all the domestic and foreign cheeses about which information could be found in the literature bearing upon the subject. The authors are C. F. Doane, of the Dairy Division, and H. W. Lawson, of the Experiment Stations. The number of cheeses described by them is 242. Of these 63, or more than a fourth of the whole number, are French. Germany follows with 40, and England comes third with 24. Switzerland is credited with 20. Italy contributes 19, Austria (with Bohemia, Hungary and the Tyrol) 17, and Holland 8. These are the leading cheese producers.
France, as was to be expected of the chief gastronomic nation, heads the list in the matter of quality as well as quantity. Few epicures would deny that the best three cheeses made anywhere are Camembert, Roquefort, and Brie. Other world-famed kinds are Pont-l'Evêque, Neufchâtel, Mont D'Or, Gruyère, Port du Salut. Among the less-known kinds are some which are almost if not quite as good as the more familiar varieties.
A pound of cheese made of unskimmed milk has twice the nutritive value of a pound of beef. It is characteristic of the gastronomic French people that, notwithstanding this fact, the best cheeses made by them, for themselves and the rest of the world, are valued and intended much less as food than as relishes, to be consumed in very small quantities.
The French custom of using cheese as an appetizer, to be eaten at the end of a meal, has been adopted the world over. Usually one thinks of appetizers (hors d'œuvres) as being served at or near the beginning of a meal; but think the matter over and you will see that an appetizer is even more useful at the end, as a harmless stimulant to keep up a steady flow of saliva.
It is not a mere accident that the three favorite French cheeses are those that have the most piquant and stimulating Flavor. This Flavor is due chiefly to molds, which are specially cultivated with great skill and patience. In Camembert and Brie the mold is on the rind and gradually works its way in, till the whole is permeated by it. In Roquefort the rind is clean of mold, which is started and developed in the inside.
Besides these molds, which, of course, differ in the several varieties, there are other sources of Flavor, such as the salt added to the curd, certain fatty acids, and ammonia-like bodies, these being particularly noticeable in well-ripened Camembert; but what chiefly determines the characteristic Flavor of these cheeses is their private and particular kinds of mold.
Perhaps some day the French will erect a statue to Flavor in Food. To the many illustrations given in these pages of the intelligence they exercise and the trouble they take to secure it, let me add one more—the making of Roquefort cheese.
We need not dwell on the first stages of the process, the heating and cooling of the milk, the adding of the rennet at a certain temperature to curdle it, and so on, as these do not differ materially from the ways of making other cheeses. Sheep's milk is used for the genuine article, but Roquefort made elsewhere of cow's milk is so similar in taste to the original article that no doubt remains as to the all-importance of the mold.
This mold is secured by making bread of wheat and barley flour to which have been added whey and a little vinegar. This bread is kept in a moist place for a month or longer till it has become moldy through and through. Then the crust is removed and the moldy crumbs are placed between layers of the cheese curd.
The romantic part of the story now begins. In the neighborhood of the town of Roquefort there are many grottoes, or natural caverns, steadily ventilated by a cool, moist current of air. Into these the cheese is taken for the ripening process. There is a great deal of salting and scraping to prevent the mold from growing on the rind. To favor its development in the inside, fresh air is provided by piercing the cheese with machinery having up to a hundred fine needles. Thus it gradually acquires its green marbling and the piquancy which makes the epicure's mouth water.
Roquefort cheese has been famous for over two thousand years. The ancient Romans were very fond of it, as Pliny relates, and imported it in large quantities. The demand increased from century to century, until half a million sheep were required to supply the demand and four hundred factories were kept busy. To-day, enormous quantities of imitation Roquefort are made in various countries. Some of it is quite tasty, but epicures will continue to ask for the original, and it is right that the law should protect them and the makers by compelling imitators to put "Roquefort Type" on their labels.
To a good many persons the piquancy of Roquefort does not appeal. Few, however, fail to succumb to the wiles of Camembert. Its popularity is attested by the fact that New York hotels alone use 30,000 of these cheeses a week during the season. There is a demand at present for about 4,000,000 Camemberts from the United States alone, and sometimes Caen and Havre are unable to supply the demand. Many attempts to manufacture Camembert have been made in America. The president of one of the largest pure food companies told me he had spent $30,000 in the attempt to produce a satisfactory Camembert; then he gave it up and began to import it. You can import cheeses but you cannot import or reproduce local flavors.
