If alcohol is added to a concentrated solution of casein in water, a pseudo-coagulation occurs; the casein is precipitated as a white substance like coagulated albumen, but if only a little alcohol is used, the solid may be redissolved in water; if, however, it is thus treated with strong alcohol, the casein becomes difficult of solution, or even quite insoluble. Alcohol added to solid soluble casein renders it opaque, and gives it the appearance of coagulated albumen. The alcohol itself dissolves a little of this.
The characteristic coagulation of casein, or its conversion from the soluble to the insoluble form, is produced rather mysteriously by rennet. Acids generally precipitate it either from aqueous solution or from milk. The coagulation effected by mineral acids from aqueous solutions is not so complete as that produced by lactic acid from milk, or vinegar, the former coagulum being more readily redissolved by alkalies or weaker basic substances than the latter.
A calf has four stomachs, the fourth being that which corresponds to ours, both in structure and functions. It is lined with a membrane from which is secreted the gastric juice and other fluids concerned in effecting the conversion of food into chyme. A weak infusion made from a small piece of this ‘mucous membrane’ will coagulate the casein of three thousand times its own quantity of milk, or the coagulation may be effected by placing a small piece of the stomach (usually salted and dried for the purpose) in the milk, and warming it for a few hours.
Many theoretical attempts have been made to explain this action of the rennet. Simon and Liebig suppose that it acts primarily as a ferment, converting the sugar of milk into lactic acid, and that this lactic acid coagulates the casein. This theory has been controverted by Selmi and others, but the balance of evidence is decidedly in its favour. The coagulation which occurs in the living stomach when milk is taken as food appears to be due to the lactic acid of the gastric juice.
Casein, when thoroughly coagulated by rennet, then purified and dried, is a hard and yellowish hornlike substance. It softens and swells in water, but does not dissolve therein, nor in alcohol nor weak acids. Strong mineral acids decompose it. Alkalies dissolve it readily, and if concentrated, decompose it on the application of heat. When moderately heated, it softens and may be drawn into threads, and becomes elastic; at a higher temperature it fuses, swells up, carbonises, and develops nearly the same products of distillation as the other protein compounds.
Note the differences between this and the soluble casein above described, viz. that obtained by simply removing the fat from the milk, then evaporating away the water, but using no rennet.
I have good and sufficient reasons for thus specifying the properties of this constituent of food. I regard it as the most important of all that I have to describe in connection with my subject—the science of cookery. It contains (as I shall presently show) more nutritious material than any other food that is ordinarily obtainable, and its cookery is singularly neglected, is practically an unknown art, especially in this country. We commonly eat it raw, although in its raw state it is peculiarly indigestible, and in the only cooked form familiarly known among us here, that of a Welsh rabbit, or rarebit, it is too often rendered still more indigestible, though this need not be the case.
Here, in this densely-populated country, where we import so much of our food, cheese demands our most profound attention. The difficulties and cost of importing all kinds of meat, fish, and poultry are great, while cheese may be cheaply and deliberately brought to us from any part of the world where cows or goats can be fed, and it can be stored more readily and kept longer than other kinds of animal food. All that is required to render it, next to bread, the staple food of Britons is scientific cookery.
If I shall be able, in what is to follow, to impart to my fellow-countrymen, and more especially countrywomen, my own convictions concerning the cookability, and consequent improved digestibility, of cheese, I shall have ‘done the State some service!’
Taking muscular fibre without bone—i.e. selected best part of the meat—beef contains on an average 72½ per cent. of water; mutton, 73½; veal, 74½; pork, 69¾; fowl, 73¾; while Cheshire cheese contains only 30⅓, and other cheeses about the same. Thus, at starting, we have in every pound of cheese rather more than twice as much solid food as in a pound of the best meat, or comparing with the average of the whole carcass, including bone, tendons, &c., the cheese has an advantage of three to one.