Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 1

by Eugene Christian

The several processes of making cheese

The cheese of commerce is ripened in various ways. The process of ripening is due to the action of enzyms present in the milk, or to those formed by bacterial growth. Ripened cheese is considered to be more easily digested than the unripened product. The best that can be said of this process is that the ripening of cheese is perhaps the least objectionable of all processes of decomposition taking place in food proteids. The only benefit that can be claimed is one of flavor, and, in matters of flavor, the appetite for Limburger, and similar cheeses, is at least a cultivated taste that furnishes evidence neither of merit nor of nutrition.

In the manufacture of cheese, the milk, sugar, and a part of the albumin and fat are wasted, and as there are no advantages in taking the milk in this changed form, there exists no scientific reason for the use of cheese when fresh milk can be obtained.

BUTTER

Butter constitutes one of the most wholesome and palatable of all animal fats, and is probably one of the most extensively used articles of food of animal origin.

When the pure butter-fat has been separated from the casein of milk it can be kept sweet and wholesome for a length of time sufficient to transport it, and to pass it through the various links in the chain of commerce, so that it can reach the family table a long distance from its source of production. This, in addition to man's instinctive relish for dairy products, makes butter the most popular fat in the diet of civilized man.

Fresh butter made in the home

In prescribing butter-fat, however, it is advisable to nominate fresh, unsalted, or what is commonly termed "sweet" butter. It is also advisable for the practitioner to suggest that this can be made daily, merely by whipping either sweet or soured cream with an ordinary rotary egg beater until the fat globules have separated from the whey.

Pure butter contains about 3,600 heat-calories to the pound, and therefore constitutes one of the most important and readily convertible of all winter foods.