PARMESAN CHEESE DAIRY.
From a Journey in Carniola, &c. by W. A. Cadell, &c.
"On the 14th April (1818,) I went to see a large cheese dairy, 3 miles from Milan, one of the dairies at which that kind of cheese, called in commerce Parmesan, is made. It is called in Italy, Formaggio di grana, because it is commonly used in a granular form, being grated, and brought to table to be eaten with soup. Much of this cheese is also made near Lodi and Pavia.
The word Formaggio is from Formaticum, which signifies, in the Latin of the middle ages, cheese prepared in a form.
The cheese is made in the morning before sunrise.
The morning's milk, and that of the preceding evening, are put into a large brass vessel, five feet in height, narrow at bottom, and widening out like a trumpet to three feet diameter at top. This vessel is placed over a fire, which is sunk in the ground, and the vessel can be removed from the fire by a crane.
When the milk is heated, runnet, in form of paste, is put in, and a little saffron, to give the cheese the yellow colour.
When the coagulation has taken place, the copper is taken off the fire, the curd is taken out in a cloth, and put within a broad wooded hoop, the sides of which are as high as the cheese is intended to be. This hoop can be straitened by means of a rope. A board is placed on the top of the cheese, and a small weight on the board. The cheese is not cut into a press.
After this, the cheese is taken to the salting room, and two cheeses are placed together, one above the other, with broad hoops tightened round them. Much salt is laid on the top of the uppermost cheese; the salt dissolves, and the brine filters through the cheeses.
The cheeses are shifted from one place to another all along the benches of the salting room, and are beaten with a flat piece of wood, cut with straight-lined furrows intersecting each other.