PREPARED RENNET AND COLOR.
The value to the cheese trade of scientifically prepared rennet and annotto color cannot be over estimated. Rennet extract, and one quality annottoine, are not in general use, but they should be. With the home prepared infusion of both articles, we have a thousand diverse shades of quality and degrees of strength, and, worst of all, they are often applied to the milk, hit or miss. The result is unevenness in cheese quality and color, where there should be perfect uniformity. We advise all makers to renounce as fast as practicable the old, often unsatisfactory method of soaking rennet skins, and steeping annotto seed, and adopt reliably prepared extracts of these essential cheese ingredients.
CHEESE THAT HUFF.
A good, properly manufactured cheese will never huff up on the surface, or swell the bandage to the point of protuberance. Cheese often huff slightly when curing, and afterward flatten into a smooth, firm surface, but they are never No. 1 stock. The writer can remember fifteen years back when makers did not understand working gaseous curds as they do now. Sales and shipments were far between then, and cheese accumulated in great numbers in factories. It was no uncommon thing in the years ’73 and ’74, in passing through a curing room containing 500 or 600 cheese, to find a large percentage of the umber covered with immense blisters, that held in retention offensive smelling gases. Every day the maker would lance these unhealthy swellings with a wire or goose quill, only to have them shortly after bulge out in another place. Besides these partially affected cheese, there were often days’ makes of those that would huff all over, swell out like huge puff balls till a slight jar would have rolled them from the shelves. These were the product of floating curds with the gas all left in. A decade and a half ago farmers did not take the same care of their milk that they do now. They were not versed in dairy literature to any extent, and did not see the importance of speedily expelling animal heat from milk or of always furnishing their cows with wholesome drinking water. Hence, tainted milk was more often the rule than the exception. With the present bettered quality of milk and the improved skill of makers in handling it, inflative cheese ought to now be foreign to the curing room. Bad taints are at present seldom met with, but slight ones creep in unawares, unless the maker is vigilant, and then it is his business to eradicate the ill-savor. Sour until acid has completely overcome the gas, grind twice, and give the curd a prolonged airing by frequent stirring. Try the prolonged stirring on common curds that are hot—too hot to go immediately to press—and notice how it will enhance the flavor of the cheese.