Domestic Animals / History and description of the horse, mule, cattle, sheep, swine, poultry and farm dogs; with directions for their management, breeding, crossing, rearing, feeding, and preparation for a profitable market; also their diseases and remedies. Together with full directions for the management of the dairy.

by Richard Lamb Allen

The Circumstances affecting the Quality of Cheese.

"All cheese consists essentially of the curd, mixed with a certain portion of the fatty matter, and of the sugar of milk. But differences in the quality of the milk, in the proportion in which the several constituents of milk are mixed together, or in the general mode of dairy management, give rise to varieties of cheese almost without number. Nearly every dairy district produces one or more qualities of cheese peculiar to itself.

Natural Differences in the Milk

It is obvious that whatever gives rise to natural differences in the quality of the milk, must affect also that of the cheese prepared from it. If the milk be poor in butter, so must the cheese be. If the pasture be such as to give a milk rich in cream, the cheese will partake of the same quality. If the herbage or other food affect the taste of the milk or cream, it will also modify the flavor of the cheese.

Milk of Different Animals.

So the milk of different animals will give cheese of unlike qualities. The ewe-milk cheeses of Tuscany, Naples, and Languedoc, and those of goats' milk made on Mont Dor and elsewhere, are celebrated for qualities which are not possessed by cheeses prepared from cows' milk in a similar way. Buffalo milk also gives a cheese of peculiar qualities, which is manufactured in some parts of the Neapolitan territory."

Other kinds of cheese are made from mixtures of the milk of different animals. Thus the strong-tasted cheese of Lecca and the celebrated Roquefort cheese are prepared from mixtures of goat with ewe milk, and the cheese of Mont Cenis from both of these mixed with the milk of the cow.

Creamed or Uncreamed Milk.

Still further differences are produced, according to the proportion of cream which is left in or is added to the milk. Thus, if cream only be employed, we have the rich cream-cheese which must be eaten in a comparatively recent state. Or, if the cream of the previous night's milking be added to the new milk of the morning, we may have such cheese as the Stilton of England, or the small, soft, and rich Brie cheeses, so much esteemed in France.