The wife of the French or Swiss landed proprietor—i.e. a working peasant—cooks the family dinner with less than a tenth of the expenditure of fuel used in England for the preparation of an inferior meal. A little charcoal under her bain-marie does it all. The economy of time corresponds to the economy of fuel, for the mixture of viands required for the stew once put into the pot is left to itself until dinner-time, or at most an occasional stirring of fresh charcoal into the embers is all that is demanded.
[CHAPTER IX.]
CHEESE.
I now come to a very important constituent of animal food, although it is not contained in beef, mutton, pork, poultry, game, fish, or any other organised animal substance, unless in egg yolk, as Lehmann states (see page 23). It is not even proved satisfactorily to exist in the blood, although it is somehow obtained from the blood by special glands at certain periods. I refer to casein, the substantial basis of cheese, which, as everybody knows, is the consolidated curd of milk.
It is evident at once that casein must exist in two forms, the soluble and insoluble, so far as the common solvent, water, is concerned. It exists in the soluble form, and completely dissolved in milk, and insoluble in cheese. When precipitated in its insoluble or coagulated form as the curd of new milk it carries with it the fatty matter or cream, and therefore, in order to study its properties in a state of purity, we must obtain it otherwise. This may be done by allowing the fat globules of the milk to float to the surface, and then removing them by separating the cream as by the ordinary dairy method. We thus obtain in the skimmed milk a solution of casein, but there still remains some of the fat. This may be removed by evaporating the solution down to solidity, and then dissolving out the fat by means of ether, which leaves the soluble casein behind. The adhering ether being evaporated, we have a fairly pure specimen of casein in its original or soluble form.
This, when dry, is an amber-coloured translucent substance, devoid of odour, and insipid. The insipidity and absence of odour of the pure and separated casein are noteworthy, as showing that the condition in which it exists in milk is very different from that of the casein of cheese. My object in pointing this out is to show that in the course of the manufacture of cheese new properties are developed. Skim-milk—a solution of casein—is tasteless and inodorous, while fresh cheese, whether made from skimmed or whole milk, has a very decided flavour and odour.
If we now add some of our dry casein to water, it dissolves, forming a yellowish viscid fluid, which, on evaporation, becomes covered with a slight film of insoluble casein, which may be readily drawn off. Some of my readers will recognise in this description the resemblance of a now well-known domestic preparation of soluble casein, condensed milk, where it is mixed with much cream, and in the ordinary preparation also much sugar. The cream dilutes the yellowness, but does not quite mask it, and the viscidity is shown by the strings which follow the spoon when a spoonful is lifted. If a concentrated solution of pure casein is exposed to the air it rapidly putrefies, and passes through a series of changes that I must not tarry to describe, beyond stating that ammonia is given off, and some crystalline substances, such as leucine, tyrosine, &c., very interesting to the physiological chemist, but not important in the kitchen, are formed.
A solution of casein in water is not coagulated by boiling; it may be repeatedly evaporated to dryness and redissolved. Upon this depends the practicability of preserving milk by evaporating it down, or ‘condensing.’
This condensed milk, however, loses a little; its albumen is sacrificed, as everybody will understand who has dipped a spoon in freshly-boiled milk and observed the skin which the spoon removes from the surface. This is coagulated albumen.