The "nutty" flavor is found particularly in May and June butter. The German biologists, H. W. Conn and W. M. Esten, who made careful studies of the ripening of cream which they published in Nos. 21 and 22 of the "Centralblatt für Bakteriologie" (1901) found that "the peculiar flavor of June butter, which is so much desired by the butter-maker, is not due to the development of the common lactic bacteria."
This brings us back to Paris and the Bœuf à la Mode. It was in May that we found the butter there so very delicious, and May is the month when the grass in France is greenest, juiciest, richest in flavoring possibilities. After collecting a large amount of material relating to the influence of food in varying the quality and Flavors of meats (which will be presented in Chapter XII), I have come to the conclusion that it is to this rich spring food that the nutty flavor is chiefly due.
As long ago as the middle of the last century epicures guessed what made the Flavor of spring butter so good. In the first volume of his Gastrophie, Eugen Baron Vaerst declares that "mountain butter is the best. March butter is particularly good because of the grass fodder the cows get. Summer butter is less good, were it only because of the heat and the annoyance to which the animals are subjected by torturing insects.... Winter butter tastes of straw and other winter feed."
The assertion that mountain butter is the best, reminds me of an episode in Bayreuth where, one summer, the family that gave us lodging and breakfast had the butter brought down every morning fresh from the mountains by a peasant girl. You pay in Germany for as much bread and butter as you eat. The first day we ate all that was given us and asked for double the amount next morning, and once more double that for the third day. It was as good and sweet and tempting as ice cream. The incident is worth mentioning as a hint to dealers and butter-makers how they might quadruple their business by supplying people with fresh butter, unsalted and made of sweet cream, as was that Bayreuth mountain butter.
In future discussions of this subject it will be necessary to make it clear just what is meant by sweet cream and sour cream. If, as the two German bacteriologists referred to say, there are some acid bacteria present in milk as it is drawn from the cow, then there is no such thing as absolutely sweet cream; and, chemically speaking, the cream we put in our coffee twelve or twenty-four hours later is still less so. But physiologically speaking, that is to our tongue, such cream still is sweet and remains sweet under ordinary atmospheric conditions for several days; that is, it does not taste sour and does not clot in the coffee cup. From the physiological point of view, therefore, the cream from which the best butter we found in Paris was made was sweet—absolutely sweet to the tongue, whatever the acidimeter may have indicated.
From the foregoing remarks any dairyman who wishes to get rich quick can gather what he must do. Another point must be borne in mind in making butter which is not to be eaten at once. Bulletin 71 of the Iowa Experiment Station calls attention to the fact that to preserve the quality (Flavor) of the butter, it is not enough to pasteurize the cream; the water also must have its germs killed by being heated to a certain degree and then cooled again. The experiments made showed that butter made from pasteurized cream and washed in pasteurized water kept normal just twice as long as butter made from unpasteurized cream and washed with unpasteurized water, even though well-water was used.
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.