Clean the stomach of a calf (or have your butcher do it for you) as soon as it is killed, scouring inside and out with salt. When perfectly clean, tack upon a frame to dry in the sun for a day. Cut in squares, and pack down in salt, or keep in wine or brandy. When you wish to use the salted, soak half an hour in cold water, wash well, and put into the milk to be turned, tied to a string, that it may be drawn out without breaking the curd. The liquor rennet sold by druggists is sometimes good, quite as often worthless. You can, however, get the dried or salted in the markets, and often in the drug-stores.
Mountain Custard, or Junket. ✠
Take a piece of rennet an inch long, or a teaspoonful of the wine in which rennet is kept, to each quart of milk. Season with vanilla or lemon, a little nutmeg, and a tablespoonful of sugar to each part. More will retard the formation. Set in a warm place—near the fire, or on the kitchen table—closely covered. Look at it from time to time, and if, in the course of an hour, there are no signs of stiffening, add more rennet. When it is firm, like blanc-mange, and before the whey separates from the curd, remove the rennet, and set upon ice until it is wanted. Serve with powdered sugar and cream.
Thickened Milk.
Boil a quart of milk, add a very little salt, and two tablespoonfuls of rice or wheat flour wet in cold milk. Stir in smoothly, and let it thicken in a vessel of boiling water, keeping the outer saucepan at a hard boil for half an hour. Eat with butter and sugar, or with cream and sugar. For invalids, or children who are suffering with summer disorders, boil at least an hour, stirring very often.
Cheese.
I have doubted the utility of inserting a receipt for regular cheese-making. The apparatus necessary for the manufacture is seldom, if ever, found in a private family, while cheese can be had in every country store at one-third the expense to an amateur of making it. But, remembering that it may be a pleasant, if not profitable experiment, for the mistress of many cows to make at her odd moments, I have secured what purports to be an exact description of “cheese-making on a small scale.”
To each gallon of milk warm from the cow, add a piece of rennet six inches long and three wide, or two tablespoonfuls rennet water—i. e., water in which rennet has been boiled. Cover, and set in a warm place until it becomes a firm curd; this should be, at the most, not more than three-quarters of an hour. When the whey has separated entirely, and looks clear and greenish, wash your hands very clean, and with them gently press all the curd to one side of the pan or tub, while an assistant dips out the whey. Have ready a stout linen bag, pour the curd into it, and hang it up to dry until not another drop of whey can be pressed out; then put the curd into a wooden dish, and chop it fine. Empty into a finer bag, and put into a small cheese-box, or other circular wooden box with a perforated bottom, and a lid that slides down easily but closely on the inside. Your bag should be as nearly as possible the same shape and size as this box. Lay heavy weights upon the top, in lack of a cheese-press, and let it stand an hour. The cloth should be wet inside as well as out, before you put the curds in. At the end of the hour, take out the cheese and chop again, adding salt this time. Have ready a fresh wet cloth; pack in the curd hard. There should be a circular cover for this bag, which must be basted all around, and very smooth on top. Scald the box and cover, then rinse with cold water, and put the cheese again under press for twelve hours. Next day, take it out, rub all over with salt, and fit on a clean wet cloth. Look at it sixteen hours later, pare off the rough edges, and scrape the sides of inequalities before returning to the press for the last time. Let it remain under the weights for twenty-four hours. Strip off the cloth, rub the cheese well with butter, and lay upon a clean cloth spread on a shelf in a cool, dry place. A wire-safe is best. Wipe clean; then rub every day with butter for a week, and turn also every twenty-four hours. At the end of the week, omit the greasing, and rub hard with a coarse cloth. Do this every day for a month. Your cheese will then be eatable, but it will be much finer six months later.
Stilton cheeses—renowned over the world—are buried in dry heather when they are firm enough to remove from the shelves, and kept there a month. This is called “ripening.”