1622. The principal varieties of cheese used in England are the following:—Cheshire cheese, famed all over Europe for its rich quality and fine piquant flavour. It is made of entire new milk, the cream not being taken off. Gloucester cheese is much milder in its taste than the Cheshire. There are two kinds of Gloucester cheese,—single and double. Single Gloucester is made of skimmed milk, or of the milk deprived of half the cream; Double Gloucester is a cheese that pleases almost every palate: it is made of the whole milk and cream. Stilton cheese is made by adding the cream of one day to the entire milk of the next: it was first made at Stilton, in Leicestershire. Sage cheese is so called from the practice of colouring some curd with bruised sage, marigold-leaves, and parsley, and mixing this with some uncoloured curd. With the Romans, and during the middle ages, this practice was extensively adopted. Cheddar cheese much resembles Parmesan. It has a very agreeable taste and flavour, and has a spongy appearance. Brickbat cheese has nothing remarkable except its form. It is made by turning with rennet a mixture of cream and new milk. The curd is put into a wooden vessel the shape of a brick, and is then pressed and dried in the usual way. Dunlop cheese has a peculiarly mild and rich taste: the best is made entirely from new milk. New cheese (as it is called in London) is made chiefly in Lincolnshire, and is either made of all cream, or, like Stilton. by adding the cream of one day's milking to the milk that comes immediately from the cow: they are extremely thin, and are compressed gently two or three times, turned for a few days, and then eaten new with radishes, salad, &c. Skimmed Milk cheese is made for sea voyages principally. Parmesan cheese is made in Parma and Piacenza. It is the most celebrated of all cheese: it is made entirely of skimmed cow's milk. The high flavour which it has, is supposed to be owing to the rich herbage of the meadows of the Po, where the cows are pastured. The best Parmesan is kept for three or four years, and none is carried to market till it is at least six months old. Dutch cheese derives its peculiar pungent taste from the practice adopted in Holland of coagulating the milk with muriatic acid instead of rennet. Swiss cheeses in their several varieties are all remarkable for their fine flavour. That from Gruyère, a bailiwick in the canton of Fribourg, is best known in England. It is flavoured by the dried herb of Melilotos officinalis in powder. Cheese from milk and potatoes is manufactured in Thuringia and Saxony. Cream cheese, although so called, is not properly cheese, but is nothing more than cream dried sufficiently to be cut with a knife.
EGGS.
1623. There is only one opinion as to the nutritive properties of eggs, although the qualities of those belonging to different birds vary somewhat. Those of the common hen are most esteemed as delicate food, particularly when "new-laid." The quality of eggs depends much upon the food given to the hen. Eggs in general are considered most easily digestible when little subjected to the art of cookery. The lightest way of dressing them is by poaching, which is effected by putting them for a minute or two into brisk boiling water: this coagulates the external white, without doing the inner part too much. Eggs are much better when new-laid than a day or two afterwards. The usual time allotted for boiling eggs in the shell is 3 to 3-3/4 minutes: less time than that in boiling water will not be sufficient to solidify the white, and more will make the yolk hard and less digestible: it is very difficult to guess accurately as to the time. Great care should be employed in putting them into the water, to prevent cracking the shell, which inevitably causes a portion of the white to exude, and lets water into the egg. Eggs are often beaten up raw in nutritive beverages.
1624. Eggs are employed in a very great many articles of cookery, entrées, and entremets, and they form an essential ingredient in pastry, creams, flip, &c. It is particularly necessary that they should be quite fresh, as nothing is worse than stale eggs. Cobbett justly says, stale, or even preserved eggs, are things to be run from, not after.
1625. The Metropolis is supplied with eggs from all parts of the kingdom, and they are likewise largely imported from various places on the continent; as France, Holland, Belgium, Guernsey, and Jersey. It appears from official statements mentioned in McCulloch's "Commercial Dictionary," that the number imported from France alone amounts to about 60,000,000 a year; and supposing them on an average to cost fourpence a dozen, it follows that we pay our continental neighbours above £83,000 a year for eggs.
1626. The eggs of different birds vary much in size and colour. Those of the ostrich are the largest: one laid in the menagerie in Paris weighed 2 lbs. 14 oz., held a pint, and was six inches deep: this is about the usual size of those brought from Africa. Travellers describe ostrich eggs as of an agreeable taste: they keep longer than hen's eggs. Drinking-cups are often made of the shell, which is very strong. The eggs of the turkey are almost as mild as those of the hen; the egg of the goose is large, but well-tasted. Duck's eggs have a rich flavour; the albumen is slightly transparent, or bluish, when set or coagulated by boiling, which requires less time than hen's eggs. Guinea-fowl eggs are smaller and more delicate than those of the hen. Eggs of wild fowl are generally coloured, often spotted; and the taste generally partakes somewhat of the flavour of the bird they belong to. Those of land birds that are eaten, as the plover, lapwing, ruff, &c., are in general much esteemed; but those of sea-fowl have, more or less, a strong fishy taste. The eggs of the turtle are very numerous: they consist of yolk only, without shell, and are delicious.
RECIPES.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
SEPARATION OF MILK AND CREAM.
1627. If it be desired that the milk should be freed entirely from cream, it should be poured into a very shallow broad pan or dish, not more than 1-1/2 inch deep, as cream cannot rise through a great depth of milk. In cold and wet weather, milk is not so rich as it is in summer and warm weather, and the morning's milk is always richer than the evening's. The last-drawn milk of each milking, at all times and seasons, is richer than the first-drawn, and on that account should be set apart for cream. Milk should be shaken as little as possible when carried from the cow to the dairy, and should be poured into the pans very gently. Persons not keeping cows, may always have a little cream, provided the milk they purchase be pure and unadulterated. As soon as it comes in, it should be poured into very shallow open pie-dishes, and set by in a very cool place, and in 7 or 8 hours a nice cream should have risen to the surface.