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 richness of cheese depends very much upon the amount of butter or oily matter it contains. It may be made entirely of cream, or from whole or unskimmed milk, to which the cream of other milk is added, or from milk from which a part of its cream has been taken, or from ordinary skim-milk, or from milk that has been skimmed three or four times, so as to remove nearly every particle of cream, or from butter-milk. The acid used in curdling milk acts upon the caseine alone, and not upon the butter particles, which are imbedded in the curd as it hardens, and thus increase its richness and flavor without adding to its consistency, which is due to the caseine.

It is evident, therefore, that cheese made entirely of cream cannot have the firmness and consistence of ordinary cheese. It is only made for immediate use, and cannot be long kept. It is, in fact, little more than thick, dried, sweet cream, from which all the milk has been pressed. On the other hand, skim-milk cheese has the opposite fault of being too hard and tough, and destitute of flavor and richness. The best quality of cheese is made from full milk, or from milk to which some extra cream is added, as in the English Stilton renowned for its richness and flavor. The Gloucester, Cheshire, Cheddar, Dunlop, and the Dutch Gouda, are made of whole milk, as are the best qualities made in this country.

The process of making cheese is both chemical and mechanical. The heating of the milk at the time of adding the acid or rennet hastens the chemical action, and facilitates the separation of the whey; at the same time great nicety is required, for, if over-heated, the oily particles will run off with the whey. On the complete separation of the whey from the curd, and the amount of butter particles retained in the latter, the taste or flavor and keeping qualities of the cheese depend. If properly made, the taste improves by keeping, but the chemical changes effected by age are not very well understood.

The practical process of manufacture most common in the best dairies of this country will appear in the following statements of successful competitors at agricultural exhibitions. The first was made, by request, to the New York State Agricultural Society, and appeared in its transactions, by A. L. Fish, of Herkimer county, one of the finest dairy regions of that state. The value of his statement is enhanced by the fact that his cows averaged seven hundred pounds of the first quality of cheese each in 1844, and seven hundred and seventy-five pounds each in 1845. In his mode of manufacture, the evening’s and morning’s milk is commonly used to make one cheese. The evening’s is strained into a tub or pans, and cooled to prevent souring. The proper mode of cooling is to strain the milk into the tin tub set in a wooden vat, [described] in the dairy-house, and cool by filling the wooden vat with ice-water from the ice-house, or ice in small lumps, and water from the pump. The little cream that rises over night is taken off in the morning, and kept till the morning and evening milk are put together, and the cream is warmed to receive the rennet. It is mixed with about twice its quantity of new milk, and warm water added to raise its temperature to ninety-eight degrees: stir it till perfectly limpid, put in rennet enough to curdle the milk in forty minutes, and mix it with the mass of milk by thorough stirring; the milk having been previously raised to eighty-eight or ninety degrees, by passing steam from the steam generator to the water in the wooden vat. In case no double vat is to be had, the milk may be safely heated to the right temperature, by setting a tin pail of hot water into the milk in the tubs. It may be cooled in like manner by filling the pail with ice-water, or cold spring-water where ice is not to be had. It is not safe to heat milk in a kettle exposed directly to the fire, as a slight scorching will communicate its taint to the whole cheese and spoil it. If milk is curdled below eighty-four degrees, the cream is more liable to work off with the whey. An extreme of heat will have a like effect.

The curdling heat is varied with the temperature of the air, or the liability of the milk to cool after adding rennet. The thermometer is the only safe guide in determining the temperature; for, if the dairyman depends upon the sensation of the hand, a great liability to error will render the operation uncertain. If, for instance, the hands have previously been immersed in cold water, the milk will feel warmer than it really is; if, on the contrary, they have recently been in warm water, the milk will feel colder than it really is. To satisfy the reader how much this circumstance alone will affect the sensation of the hand, let him immerse one hand in warm water, and at the same time keep the other in a vessel of cold water, for a few moments; then pour the water in the two dishes together, and immerse both hands in the mixture. The hand that was previously in the warm water will feel cold, and the other quite warm, showing that the sense of feeling is not a test of temperature worthy of being relied upon. A fine cloth spread over the tub while the milk is curdling will prevent the surface from being cooled by circulation of air. No jarring of the milk, by walking upon a springy floor, or otherwise, should be allowed while it is curdling, as it will prevent a perfect cohesion of the particles.

“When milk is curdled so as to appear like a solid, it is divided into small particles to aid the separation of the whey from the curd. This is often too speedily done to facilitate the work, but at a sacrifice of quality and quantity.”

To effect the fine division of the curd for the easy separation of the whey, Mr. Fish uses a wire network, made to fit into the tub, the meshes of fine wire being about a half-inch square, and the outer rim of coarse and stronger material. A cheese-knife is also used, about half as long as the diameter of the tub, and firmly fastened to the lower end of a long screw which passes through one end of the blade as it lies horizontally, leaving the blade at right angles with the screw, which has a coarse thread, and passes through a piece of wood on the top of the tub, held firm by notches at the ends laid on the edges of the tub. By turning a crank, the knife passes down through the curd in revolutions, cutting it into layers of the thickness of the threads of the screw.

The following is the statement of Mrs. Williams, of Windsor, Massachusetts, who received the first premium at the Franklin County Fair, in 1857, for exceedingly rich, fine, and delicately-flavored cheeses of seventy-five pounds each. Her method, which is the result of her own experience and observation, corresponds almost exactly, as the committee remark, with the English mode of making the famous Cheddar cheese, which is much the same as the Cheshire. Mrs. Williams says: “My cheese is made from one day’s milk of twenty-nine cows. I strain the night’s milk into a tub, skim it in the morning, and melt the cream in the morning’s milk: I warm the night’s milk, so that with the morning’s milk, when mixed together, it will be at the temperature of ninety-six degrees; then add rennet sufficient to turn it in thirty minutes. Let it stand about half or three quarters of an hour; then cross it off and let it stand about thirty minutes, working upon it very carefully with a skimmer. When the curd begins to settle, dip off the whey, and heat it up and pour it on again at the temperature of one hundred and two degrees. After draining off and cutting up, add a teacup of salt to fourteen pounds.

“The process of making sage cheese is the same as the other, except adding the juice of the sage in a small quantity of milk.”

Another successful competitor in the same state says: “We usually make but one curd in a day. The night’s milk is strained into pans till morning, when the cream that will have risen is taken off, and the milk warmed to blood heat, when the cream is again returned to the milk and thoroughly mixed. This prevents the melting of the cream that would otherwise run off with the whey. The whole is then immediately laded into a tub with the morning’s milk, and set for the cheese, with rennet sufficient to form the curd in about thirty minutes; and here much care is thought to be necessary in cutting and crossing the curd, and much moderation in dipping and draining the whey from it, that the white whey (so called) may not exude from it.