Part 3

One great set-back to good cheese making is inexperienced and careless labor. This is another cog in the wheel that has been retrograding the reputation of our goods during the last few years. A medical student cannot obtain a diploma authorizing him to take under his charge the welfare of the sick without three years’ study aided by ocular demonstrations of his especial science. Then, he is expected not to have a dim idea of a patient’s condition when diagnosing his case, but to know and understand all about it. No cheese maker is fit for duty unless he can diagnose the condition of a vat of milk on a quick examination. The natural odor of pure milk has a peculiar animal smell, whose nature can be acquired by careful olfactory tests indulged in as the student draws the fluid from the cow’s teats. After an apprentice at the business can tell pure, sweet, untainted milk in any spot or place, he must learn to distinguish between that which is tainted and that which is verging on the sour. Tainted milk is radically different from sour milk, and infused in the product they each tend toward utterly diverse results. To pass a correct judgment on milk quality is thus essential No. 1 in a maker’s practical knowledge. Requirement No. 2, is to have a thorough understanding of the constituents and influence of all of the foreign ingredients that go into cheese. Rennet, the most potent auxiliary of the cheese maker’s craft, should never be handled or applied by ignorant hands. The amateur maker should gain a physiological insight into the lactic portion of animal anatomy, and have an intelligent comprehension of the active force of the peptic secretion. When such knowledge is acquired he will see the importance of never countenancing any coagulating fluid that is not immaculately pure in extraction and free from any subsequent taint. He will also understand its nature enough to always make a judicious application of it to the milk designed for manufacture. Here the necessity of step No. 1 joining hands with No. 2 is apparent, for he cannot make a judicious application unless his olfactory sense is trained to perceive and gauge every variation of the milk quality. Necessity No. 3, is in following the quality variation of milk into the cooking and maturing curd. It is a well-known fact with cheese makers that no two vats of curd will scarcely ever work exactly alike in succession. If one is to know absolutely just what to do and what to leave undone at certain moments of assimilation and maturity in curd, he must have gained that knowledge not from books but from continued practical experience. Here the necessity for previous learning arises. No pettifogger would be expected to argue legal points before the Supreme Court, because lack of advancement in the rudiments of his profession would make him as unfit for such a pleader as a farmer or merchant. Every man to his business, and no man to be trusted in any trade capacity until he has proved himself competent. So, if an amateur lawyer or doctor is not to be trusted, why should responsibility be placed on the shoulders of a green hand at cheese making? He is expected to properly prepare an important article of human food, and, inexperienced and ignorant of the rudiments of the trade, he stumbles along in the dark, doing, perhaps, the best that he can, and not so much to blame for the failures that accrue as are his employers.

Wide dispersion of training schools for both butter and cheese makers is not far off, and I, for one, hail that day with delight.

WHERE OUR CHEESE GOES TO.

After contemplating the immensity of our annual cheese output, the question naturally arises, “Where does it all go to?” The earliest shipments of American cheese were made from New York to England in 1835 and 1836. The beginning was very limited; shipments of cheese were made in casks; $60,000 would probably comprise the value of all shipments made in those years. As England still remains our principal foreign customer, we will come down to the year 1882 and give the official figures of the port of New York of the annual receipts and exports. We do not mean to intimate that England takes _all_ of our exports, but she absorbs the major portion of them.

Year. Receipts. Exports. Receipts of Cheese in New York, 1882, 2,350,559 1,898,192 ” ” ” 1883, 2,456,232 1,957,967 ” ” ” 1884, 2,407,550 1,932,702 ” ” ” 1885, 2,122,187 1,658,696 ” ” ” 1886, 1,943,260 1,575,262 ” ” ” 1887, 1,994,857 1,450,955 ” ” ” 1888, 1,993,462

The 1888 export is not recorded yet. It is hard to get at the home trade quantity used throughout the country. There are many cheese distributed from factories to neighboring towns in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and other states of which no account is kept, and there are no statistics covering the entire make, but at a guess we should say it was about 4,000,000 boxes annually. The cause of decline in receipts at the port of New York since 1882, is largely due to the fact that a good many cheese made in the northern part of this State (N. Y.) are bought by Canadians and shipped _via_ Montreal. It is said that Englishmen eat twelve pounds of cheese _per capita_ a year, while Americans eat three pounds. Cheese consumption is, however, on the increase here, as the healthy and nutritive qualities of the product are more and more appreciated. One of the most serious drawbacks to universal cheese consumption is the large profits exacted by middlemen when they dispense it to the public. If cheese could be had at the grocery for 9 or 10 cents per pound instead of 14 or 15 cents, it would be found in abundance on the poor man’s table, and a heavy decrease in the export trade would result. We believe that such a time is coming, and with it will come a vast improvement in the average quality of the national make. This is not a mere speculation, but a distinctive pointer of the times, and its verification is already at hand. Thirty-five years ago the innovation of the cheddar process gave cheese quality its first great advance. That advance remains yet to be perfected in detail, and then a cheese millennium will reign.

MOISTURE IN CHEESE.

One of the most essential points in determining the quality of a cheese is the amount of moisture it contains. A proper retention of moisture by the product in a cured state depends primarily on the rennet that separated it from the watery serum of milk, and secondly on the amount of heat applied in cooking, and the quantity of salt afterwards added. To adjust all these little niceties to a minimum of fine, even quality of which moisture is an adjunct, requires experience and long familiarity with the handling and treatment of milk. Butter, moisture and caseine should exist in about equal parts to make a mellow cheese, and, to fix the proportion rightly, enough rennet should be incorporated into the milk to expel all excess of moisture, and yet leave enough to withstand the effect of a heat judiciously gauged to cook it. Thus, rennet influences moisture on the start, and other forces afterward are introduced that either aid or retard it. When rennet diffuses itself through milk its power and potency are largely measured by the temperature of the fluid body surrounding it. As cheese making is merely an imitation of nature’s workings in curdling milk in a calf’s stomach, the nearer we can follow that process on the start, the closer to perfection we get. Long experience has demonstrated that a temperature between 80° and 85° Fahrenheit is the best degree of warmth for milk to have attained when it receives the peptic fluid. A temperature above that expels the butter globules into the whey, and below, the active principle of rennet is not brought out and tardily and incompletely coagulates the mild solids. By afterward applying the lowest degree of heat that will cook it within a reasonable time to a consistency of contraction and expansion, the moisture still remains in proper proportion. A few degrees of excess heat will produce a dry, hard curd, and a future dry, hard cheese. Judgment, discretion, and experience are necessary in applying salt to retain moisture. Salt itself is, of course, a moisture retainer, but a too heavy application hardens and stiffens the cheese structure and retards the curing of the product. Never salt more than enough to give and retain flavor and preserve quality. If the points we have given above have all been observed, then the proper proportion of moisture in cheese will be assured.

Prominent English cheese judges have passed verdicts on fine cheese in the following words: “We want cheese rich, solid, fine flavored, true colored, that is, of an even color throughout, sound, handsome, that will go on to improve for twelve months or longer if desired.” “A good cheese is close and firm in texture, yet mellow; in character or quality it is rich with a tendency to melt in the mouth; the flavor full and fine, apparently that of a hazel-nut.” “The characteristics of a good cheese are mellow and rich in taste and flavor, and firm and full in texture, solid but not tough.” “A good cheese is rich without being greasy, with a sweet, nutty flavor, clear and equal color throughout, and of a compact, solid texture, without being waxy; firm, and yet melts easily in the mouth, leaving no rough or ill-flavor on the palate.” The English conception of peerless cheese is ours, too, and we must continue to grind away on the road of improvement until we bring the united product to the standard of unimpeachable quality and uniformity.

RULE FOR MAKING OUT DIVIDENDS.

Many makers are now expected to figure out the milk dividends for the patrons, and issue fortnightly statements. A quick, easy rule to follow in doing this business, is to first foot up each patron’s milk for the number of days’ delivery in one or two sales, as the case may be, draw a line across the page of the factory account book opposite the date sold up to, and, as you add each man’s milk, set the amount down opposite his name on the tally slate. After you have summed it all up, go over it again, adding from the top of the columns downward. This will correct any mistakes you may have made. Next, add the separate sums of milk together into one grand total and, using this united sum for a dividend, take the number of pounds of cheese in the sale or sales for a divisor, and the quotient will be the ratio or the number of pounds of milk it has taken to make a pound of cheese. Then, multiply the number of pounds of cheese by the price per 100 pounds you get for making, and deduct the product from the full cash amount that the cheese has brought. The residue money divide up proportionately among the patrons as follows: Using the grand total of milk for a divisor, see how many times it is contained in the money, minus cost of making. The quotient will be the net price of one hundred pounds of milk. Multiply each patron’s separate amount of milk by this price per hundred pounds, and the product will be the net monied income on that sale or sales for the patron. In getting the price of a pound of milk it is seldom necessary to carry decimally beyond mills. In a measure, the work all proves itself, for, if, by adding together the face value of each patron’s check, the amount does not agree with the cheese returns, less making, your figuring will need a review.

It is customary now to send out with each check a statement demonstrating and setting forth just how the factory business is running. Thus, each patron becomes a critic of the secretary. I append a statement properly filled out:

SALE STATEMENT.

_Plainfield, N. Y., June 20, 1889._

E. W. WRIGHT’S CHEESE FACTORY.

IN ACCOUNT WITH

MR. JOHN WILLIAMS.

Sold from May 14th to 29th. =================================================== No. Boxes, 168 Total Milk, 69,779 Total Cheese, 7,026 Price per pound, 3,434 @ 8¼-c. 3,592 @ 8⅛-c. Ratio, 9.93 Net price per 100 pounds Milk, 71.3 Your Milk, 8,336 Amount less making, $59.43

THE WHEY VAT.

The whey vat may be regarded as a necessary evil, but with means at hand to relieve ourselves of some of its putrefactive characteristics. We trust that the day for having this swill tub harnessed to the factory will soon be an item of the shady past. Whey is all right in its place, but its place, as soon as it is drained from the curd, is a long distance from the factory building. I would place the whey vat ten rods away from the factory, and if night delivery of milk was the rule, I would move it _twenty_ rods off. Get it at least beyond contaminating distance, and then have the whey carried to it in open tin troughs. If the troughs are thoroughly painted you need not fear rust, and as they are of metal they cannot dry up, warp and leak. Have the spouts about the factory perfectly tight so that no whey can fall to the ground, for it is fearful stuff to generate offensive effluvia. Try and keep the whey receptacle as neat and clean as possible. Have it roofed, but open on the sides. Skim the cream from it every morning, and it would be much better if you would churn it fresh instead of keeping it for weeks to be rendered out in a kettle by fire. Scrub the vat out every day with a broom; it will take five minutes’ time and a pailful of hot water. Make it a rule for each patron to draw away no more than three pails of whey for every hundred pounds of milk delivered. Also, make it a rule to yard nobody’s pigs or calves about the premises for convenient whey slopping. Insist on it that if your patrons insist on drawing sour whey home in their milk cans they put on extra “elbow grease” afterward in cleansing them. A cheese maker hardly likes to make the imputation to patrons that their wives are not neat (only, perhaps, when they are in a great hurry) about scalding out the sour whey from milk cans, and yet such insinuations on his part are often necessary.

WHYS AND WHEREFORES.

Curd is first cut with the horizontal knife, to facilitate easy expulsion of the whey.

Cheese is a good edible, because, besides being highly nutritive, the rennet or gastric juice it contains aids digestion and the assimilation of other foods.

Whey should never be fed to cows, because, having once been secreted in their mammillary glands in the form of milk, it has now taken on the nature of an excrement; consequently, a re-secretion would be highly prejudicial to the quality and healthfulness of the product.

It was formerly supposed that febrine was exclusively a constituent of animal blood; but now the theory that slight traces of it in milk induce rennet coagulation is generally accepted as authentic.

If a cheese is misshapen, by uneven pressing or otherwise, when taken from the hoop, put it back and press it over again. Remember that appearance goes a long way with dealers. Do not tolerate any cheese in the room that are deformed.

Cheese makers should insist that patrons with large messes of milk set their night’s yield in two cans, thoroughly air the fluid, by stirring or dipping immediately subsequent to milking, and then dump both portions together in the morning, so as not to mix night’s and morning’s milk until it is mixed in common in the cheese vat. If this rule is insisted upon and faithfully observed, a great deal of damaged milk will be avoided.

A quack doctor should as soon be granted a diploma to practice, as an ignorant apprentice at cheese making be given the responsibility of the manufacture of a vat of milk. The health of the community is in great danger from both frauds.

Cheese that are surface mottled, spread the bandage and show a soft, weak rind, have been insufficiently cooked. The remedy lies in a more upward tendency of the mercury.

The art of cheese making cannot be learned wholly from paper, because variations of milk quality constantly clash with regular modes of procedure. Here the practical experience and sound judgment of the maker must intervene and offset the lacteal variation, by appropriate changes in the manner of working the product.

Making good cheese out of poor milk is much talked of by makers and considered quite an accomplishment. It consists in clothing the product in a glamour of deception, propagating dyspepsia and shielding careless dairymen.

Skimmed cheese is dry and tasteless and unfit for human food, because the meat has been extracted, and the shell left. It should take a back seat on the bench of humiliation beside oleomargarine.

When whey sparkles it is sour.

When raw curd settles quickly after being cut up, it is a signal that it is aging rapidly and developing acid. White scum on the whey indicates the presence of acid.

Butter exuding slightly from the hoops of pressing cheese tells of acid and bespeaks a fine quality of goods. Butter exuding in excessive quantity from the hoops is proof that the milk has either been violently shaken up over rough roads or has been set at a very high temperature.

You cannot get a good rind on a poor quality of cheese; you can always have a perfect rind on one of good quality. Thus, in one sense, the rind indicates the quality.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness” about a factory, because, milk being an animal fluid it is of nitrogenous composition, and the waste that accrues from it on decomposition becomes the most fetid carrion.

Buttermilk added to sweet milk in making cheese is a diabolical habit, the object, nowadays, being not to produce cheese from slop but from pure, wholesome milk alone.

Airing curds thoroughly after salting is necessary to expel gaseous odors. The improved quality of the cheese will repay every maker for doing it.

Never cease to agitate the question of only six days’ labor in the week for the cheese maker. Agitate it, because God has laid it down as a commandment for all mankind, and nature inexorably exacts from the physical forces every violation of the rule.

Keep the curing room at an even temperature of from 65° to 70° Fahrenheit, because a less amount of heat might sour the green cheese on the shelves and more warmth might cause them to lose butter to the point of off flavor.

Keep the surface of cheese impervious to fly attacks and you will never be troubled with skippers.

Never use sour press clothes on cheese, not only from sense of neatness, but because the rank acid will check the rind.

If you are caught with a soft curd on your hands, one that has soured so quickly that you have had no opportunity to give it a firm cook, grind it twice and stir it more than usual. This will reduce pulpy lumps, add stability to the curd and prevent the cheese from spreading out of shape in the bandage.

Rennet is the life and soul of cheese, as much depending on its efficacy as on yeast in bread. Excessive heat stifles and kills out its virtue and leaves the cheese structure dead and indigestible. Makers should bear this fact in mind and never allow the cooking curd to rest long on the bottom of the vat.

The rennet jar should never be covered, as nothing can be mentioned that is more liable to contract fetid taint than these skins. Exclusion of air from the vessel in which they are soaking is extremely liable to spoil them in spite of the salt the liquor contains.

In weighing patrons’ milk at the factory, the scales should be balanced down and up weight taken. To the uninitiated this might at first seem an injustice, but a little experience will soon show that it is imperatively necessary. The dealers to whom the cheese are consigned exact stiff up weight, and if the same is not taken at the milk delivery window, woe be to the ratio. As all patrons are served alike in the premises, no loss or injustice accrues to any one and the maker is in a position to deal as he is being dealt with.

Pulverize salt thoroughly before sprinkling it over the curd. Hard lumps will not dissolve and will produce cauterized spots through the cheese.

During the hot weather of summer remember that curd will stand a third more souring, and yet come down into mellow cheese, than it would earlier or later in the season. Bearing this fact in mind gives a maker mental relief when he has a curd that has the start of him on acid and yet afterward comes out all right, perhaps making the best cheese in the room.

Saving curd over to mix in with the next day’s cheese is not desirable, but it is often unavoidable, as cheese of as even weight as possible are always wanted. Take the curd to be saved over and put it in a bag of bandage cloth. Mix into it an extra handful of salt, in order to prevent too much souring, and hang the sack in a cool, dry place. The next day, just prior to drawing the whey, empty the old curd into the vat and stir it up with the new.

There are sometimes extreme cases of butter separation from the cooked caseine. I have seen where butter would settle in the seams and cavities of cheese, to the almost utter ruination of the product and the distraction of the maker because he could not discern and stop the cause. There are many causes, some of which are beyond the power of the maker to remedy, such as churning the milk in drawing it to the factory over stony roads, etc. But he can prevent too high heat at setting time, and he can manipulate milk with gentleness before the rennet is added.

In consigning cheese to market always put the consignor’s name on the side instead of one cover of the box. Covers are apt to come off in transit and get mixed with those of other consignments, entailing much trouble to those concerned.

When coagulated milk has reached the right consistency to cut up, draw the curd knife through it at a moderate speed, truly and unwaveringly. The cutting behind an experienced hand will expel whey clear and green in color. In this item of procedure let your hand be counted among the experienced.

POTENT MAXIMS FOR THE CHEESE MAKER.

Keep a perfectly sweet, clean vat and spotless, shining apparatus and utensils.

Make an olfactory test of every mess of milk before it is dumped into the weighing can, and reject all that is tainted, unclean or tending toward the sour, as by the acceptance of such injured milk you damage your own trade reputation, detract from the dividend of every patron who furnishes perfect milk and irreparably wrong every consumer of the cheese.

Insist on each one of your patrons straining their milk through a fine cloth strainer of double thickness, and use the same yourself for it to pass through into the vat.

In heating up your milk to a temperature to meet a reception of the rennet, stir it frequently and gently.

Never set above 86° Fahrenheit in spring and fall and 84° in summer.

Remember that too high heat before setting separates the butter globules from the milk structure and that they are subsequently lost in the whey.

Use nothing but stone jars for keeping rennet. If a mess of rennet worth, perhaps, a dollar should get slightly tainted, throw it away rather than impregnate it through $200 worth of cheese and cause serious illness among numerous human beings.

Use only annottoine cut directly from the seed by the chemical action of potash.

The imputation that urine is used in the paste preparation should make every manufacturer shun it with loathing until the vile stigma is disproved.

Be at least five minutes in stirring the rennet into milk. Stir it with great gentleness, so that the butter globules will not be displaced.