In Scotland, Butter is made by churning the whole of the milk, which is put into the churn as it comes from the cow, and kept there till it is slightly sour before it is churned; but this makes the operation of churning very laborious, and the butter has always a sour taste. In England, butter is made only from the cream, which is not put into the churn till wanted for churning, but is kept previously from three days to a week in a deep earthen vessel, and is stirred every day when fresh cream is put in.
Churns are of two kinds, viz. the plunge-churn, the motion of which is up and down; and the barrel-churn, which turns round, and is considered much the best. Churning is generally performed in the open air in summer, and in the dairy scullery near the fire in winter. If kept too cold, the butter will not "come;" and, if too hot, the butter will be soft, and will soon become rancid.
When the butter has come, as the dairy-maids call it, it is gathered together with the hand or a net, and put into a kind of shallow tub; the buttermilk is then emptied out of the churn, which should be left to drain for half an hour or thereabouts, and be afterwards well washed with scalding water and a little salt. The butter in the mean time is kneaded and worked with the hand, or with two small and very smooth pieces of wood, to get all the buttermilk out of it; and in England water is generally poured over it to assist in this operation, though in Scotland it is said that water spoils the butter. When all the buttermilk is worked out, the butter is slightly salted, and then made up into rolls or lumps with the two pieces of wood. In the South of England, as soon as the butter is made, it is put into water; but in the North it is laid in a dry cool place, and covered over.
When butter is intended for salting, it is not made into rolls, but the salt is worked into it as soon as the buttermilk has been removed. The following composition is recommended as a very good one for salting butter for home use. Take two parts of salt, one part of lump sugar, and one part of saltpetre. Beat them well together, and add one ounce of this composition to every sixteen ounces of butter.
When cows are fed on turnips, an unpleasant taste is given both to the milk and butter; but it may generally be removed in the following manner. Pour a quart of boiling water on two ounces of saltpetre, and, when it is thoroughly dissolved and cold, bottle it for use. If two table-spoonfuls of this mixture be put to every four gallons of milk, as soon as it is brought into the dairy and strained, it is said to take off the unpleasant taste; or a lump of saltpetre about the size of a walnut may be put into the cream-pot and well stirred twice a day, when the fresh cream is added. In winter, butter is sometimes so pale as to look almost like lard, but it may be coloured by a little arnatto, which is sold for that purpose in the grocers' shops; or the juice of carrot scraped and strained through muslin, or that of the flowers of the marigold, may be used. In either case the colouring matter is mixed with the cream before churning.
Cheese is made by coagulating milk with rennet, and then separating the whey or watery part from the curd, which, when salted, pressed, and dried, becomes cheese. Rennet is the stomach of a calf washed, cleaned, and salted thoroughly inside and out, being left in an earthen jar, with a thick coating of salt on it, for three or four days. It is then taken out of the pickle and hung up to dry, and in many places it is kept in this state till wanted; but in others, after it has become dry, it is resalted and placed again in the jar, which has a bladder or a piece of thick paper pierced with pinholes tied over it, the rennet being kept twelve months in this state before it is used. In London, calves' stomachs and those of lambs, prepared for rennet, are kept in large casks and sold in the oilmen's shops. In whatever way the rennet has been pickled and preserved, it is always soaked in brine made of salt and water or salt and whey, before it is used, and a bunch of sweet herbs is generally put into the brine in which the rennet is soaked, in order to give an agreeable flavour to the cheese. The whole, however, must be strained off clear before it is put to the milk.
Whenever cheese is to be made, the milk must be warmed to about 90° of Fahrenheit, or the rennet will not act. As soon as the curd has set, it is separated from the whey in several different ways, and on the manner in which this is done the kind of cheese produced will principally depend. When a Stilton, or any other kind of rich buttery cheese, is to be made, a very strong brine is prepared of salt and cold water, in which is steeped a bundle of sweet herbs, consisting of thyme, hyssop, marjoram, and savory, with a branch of sweet-briar, and a few peppercorns. This is suffered to remain three or four days, after which it is strained off, and the rennet having been put into it and soaked four or five days, is then ready for use. When all is prepared, the morning's new milk, together with the cream from the last night's milking, is put into a narrow, but deep, circular pan, and the liquid rennet put to it.
As soon as the curd is formed, it is very carefully removed from the pan, without breaking it, if possible, and laid on a deep circular sieve, where it is slightly pressed, in order that the whey may drain from it. It is then put into the cheese-vat, which should be ten inches and a half deep, and eight inches and a quarter over, with a moveable hoop of wood on the top, over which a piece of flat board is generally laid. As soon as the cheese has acquired a sufficient consistency, it is removed from the vat and firmly bound round with a clean cloth, which is changed every day, and the cheese bound tighter and tighter, till at last it becomes sufficiently firm to stand alone. Every time the cloth is changed, the cheese is wiped at the top and bottom and turned, so that each end may be equally level. When it has become sufficiently firm to support itself without the cloth, the cheese is removed to the cheese-room; but it still requires to be turned twice a day, and brushed, for about three months.
Single and double Gloucester cheeses are made very differently from Stilton, though the rennet is prepared for both in nearly the same manner, except that some allspice and a little saltpetre are generally added to the brine. In some places the brine is made of whey, in which enough salt is put to make it float an egg; but it is said that cheeses made in this manner are very apt to heave.
The best single Gloucester cheese for toasting is what is called a one-meal cheese; that is to say, it is made entirely of new milk taken fresh from the cow. An inferior kind is called a two-meal cheese, and it is made with the evening's milk after it has been skimmed in the morning, mixed with the morning's new milk. The milk is then warmed, and coloured with a little arnatto, care being taken, however, that none of the solid part of the drug goes into the milk; the usual practice, indeed, is to dip the arnatto in a little milk, and then to rub it on a flat stone or plate. The colouring matter thus produced is washed off into a basinful of milk, which is then allowed to stand and settle, so as to deposit its sediment before it is poured into the cheese-tub. The rennet is then added, and the whole is kept moderately warm (the milk should never sink below 80°) till the curd is come, which is generally in about an hour. The curd is then broken up with a flat piece of wood called a cheese-knife, and the whey is strained from it; the fragments of curd being frequently moved about, to allow the whey to escape from them. Some boiling water is then mixed with a little of the cold whey, and poured quite hot upon the curd, so as to cover it, the curd being stirred briskly about, and afterwards left for half an hour to sink. The liquor is then drained off, and the curd taken up by the hands and carefully squeezed as it is put into the cheese-vat, which is not only filled, but has as much piled on the top as it will hold. When this is done, the curd in and on the vat is turned into a cheese-cloth, and the vat is washed with whey. The cloth, with the curd in it, is next placed in the vat, and the ends of the cloth are turned over the top of the curd, and tucked into the vat round the edges. It is then put into the cheese-press, where it remains about three hours, after which it is taken out and the cloth changed, before it is again put into the vat and into the press. In this state it remains three or four hours longer. It is then taken out of the vat and out of the cloth, and rubbed well with salt all over, taking care that the salt touches every part, after which it is put into the vat without a cloth, and replaced in the press. The next morning it is taken out of the press and again salted and turned, and the same operation is repeated in the evening. After this it is suffered to remain five or six days in the press, being taken out every morning and turned, but not salted. It is then removed to the cheese-room, where it is turned every day for ten or twelve days, and frequently scraped and rubbed. In some places, when the cheese is thoroughly dry, the outer rind is painted with a mixture of Spanish brown and Indian pink, rubbed in with the hand. The whey from this cheese produces a great deal of butter; and, indeed, it is generally set up for cream as soon as it comes from the curd.