Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living

by Henry T. Finck

This peasant was himself a cheesemaker, and our conversation took place within sight of his cowsheds. He was surprised when I asked him if he ever used sour cream to make butter. He had never dreamt of such a thing. Usually he churned it in the evening, using the cream that had risen on the morning of the same day. At the latest the churning was done the next morning before the cream could possibly sour in that climate. A sour "starter," such as is nearly always added to cream in America before it is churned, he had never heard of; the very idea amazed him. And Swiss butter is nearly always good, while American butter is usually bad.

Questioned in regard to cheese, he said they made two grades of it, the Fettkäse, which contains all the cream, and the Magerkäse, made of skim milk. For the latter kind, he said, he had no use, because it was comparatively tasteless. It is made in considerable quantities, however, for the poor, of milk from which the cream has been taken for butter-making or for the hotel tables.

Cheese-making is much more of a fine art than most of us imagine. The utmost skill and care must be used to exclude undesirable flavors in the air due to uncleanly surroundings, since cheese absorbs these as readily as butter does. The season of the year and the feed must always be considered. Thus, in regard to the highly prized English Stilton we read that the finest variety "is principally made between March and September and solely from the milk of cows fed on natural pasture"; and that "the use of artificial food for the cows is at once detected in a change for the worse in the character of the cheese"—that is, its flavor.

Upon good feeding depends the production of fat in milk, and milk fat, alias cream, is a great source of Flavor. The best kinds of most of the leading cheeses are made of whole milk—milk with none of the cream taken out. Some kinds, like cottage cheese, are made of skim milk yet how the addition of cream improves their Flavor! Camembert, of course, is made of whole milk, and in the manufacture of some kinds, including Stilton, extra cream is sometimes added.

Much spurious stuff is palmed off on unwary buyers as whole milk or cream cheese. The dealers who do this, think themselves "smart," but in the end they harm their business. The excellent little book on "Cheese and Cheese Making," by Long and Benson (London: Chapman and Hall, 1896) begins with these instructive words:

"Professor Henry, of the Wisconsin Agricultural College, recently stated that the loss of the American cheese trade with great Britain was owing to the fact that his countrymen did not make the best article, and that in many cases imitation cheese was produced for the sake of a possible temporary profit but to the ultimate loss of all concerned. Whatever may be the immediate gain effected by the addition of foreign fat to milk, or by the removal of a portion of the cream it contains, the permanent value of the cheese industry to the producer is maintained only by the manufacture of the best and of its production in the largest possible quantity."

The italics are mine. They emphasize what is one of the most regrettable aspects of the situation in America—the deplorable and at the same time foolish disposition to make an immediate extra profit by unloading on purchasers inferior cheeses and other foods in the belief that the consumers are too ignorant or indifferent to know or care what they get.

From personal experience I can relate a detail of New York market history which vividly illustrates the folly of this attitude.

For several years I was able to buy the best Edam cheeses made in Holland—full-cream and therefore full-flavored. One autumn, on returning to the city, I tried in vain to get this same brand at the places where it had been on sale. I sampled the substitutes but was not satisfied with their Flavor. Having found out through a grocer the name of the importer of that brand, I called on him and asked why he no longer had it on his list. He had the effrontery to inform me that it was because he had had so many complaints that that brand did not keep well—that it "dried out." I told him that my own experience had been just the reverse, and that, as a matter of course, the more cream-fat there was in a cheese the more slowly it would dry out. But he stuck to his story.

In a confidential talk with a grocer I then ascertained what I had suspected. Dealers in cheap Edams, made of skimmed milk, had crowded out the maker of the creamy Edam who, of course, could not make so low a price to the wholesale dealers as they did. "Why not import several brands and charge according to their value and Flavor?" I asked, adding that many persons surely would gladly pay extra for the better grades. But that argument, too, was unavailing. The "smart" dealers did not wish to offer several grades; they wanted to charge the highest price for the lowest grade. And now note the consequences.