Part 4
Curd should stand not less than forty or more than sixty minutes after the application of rennet before cutting, the variation in time to be governed by season, condition of milk and desired keeping qualities. Curd is fit to cut up when it will split clean before the finger but is not so brittle as to break before the advancing knife. Cut first with the horizontal knife lengthways, then crossway, then lengthways with the perpendicular blade. If milk is very ripe, and a quick scald is necessary, cut once more crossway with the perpendicular blade. Never slash curd in cutting, as it starts milky whey and lowers your yield.
After cutting curd if milk is in normal condition, it is, perhaps, better to agitate the curd gently for a few moments before heat is applied. If milk has already taken on acid, apply heat immediately after cutting. In agitating curd use the hands for the first fifteen minutes, then manipulate it with a rake.
Stir only enough to keep it separated and prevent it from scorching on the hot bottom of the vat.
Remember that cooking curd thoroughly is, without doubt, the most important part of the whole programme of cheese making.
Do not place sole reliance on thermometer figures—let your judgment rule supreme above that. See that every day’s curd—the product of milk in all stages of maturity—does not part with the whey until it is cooked to a state of contractibility in which the cubes will separate by expansion after pressure by squeezing in the hand. No maker considers his bread free from rawness until it has received a certain amount of heat in the oven, and no cheese maker can expect to get a mellow, firm cheese unless he cooks his curd as above described. By using the smallest amount of heat possible to cook curd within a reasonable time, a finer quality of cheese is secured and a better yield.
Hold curd in the whey until it will string fine threads, one-fourth of an inch in length, on the hot iron.
Aim to have the whey well drained out of the curd before it is ground. Do not grind curd when it is too hot. If necessary, cut into small blocks or strips and scatter over the bottom of the vat, to cool to a temperature to about 85° Fahrenheit before grinding.
Cheese makers should not be too much wedded to fixed rules. For instance, do not always hold curd in the whey until it shows a quarter of an inch of acid by the iron simply because it may be a rule. Let your judgment rise supreme over all rules. Frequently, through the summer there are cool nights when the milk keeps so sweet that the next day no acid will show by the time you have the curd thoroughly cooked. At such times, as an experiment, draw off the whey sweet and let the curd develop acid in the pack. For your particular locality, quality of milk and character of feed, such a method may produce finer cheese than if soured in the whey, and it may not. You must test all of these little details to find out.
Two pounds of salt and the fractional parts of a third pound, up to sixteen ounces per 1,000 pounds of milk, covers the cheese maker’s scale for the season in this department. As a rule, two pounds in the spring, with a gradual ascendancy in quantity as the apex of hot weather approaches, and then a declination in quantity toward fall, is about the average amount used per 1,000 pounds of milk for the Cheddar process. There are more makers who do not salt above two and a half pounds in hot weather than there are who use three pounds. High salting retards curing, and the object now is to get a new cheese onto the market as quickly as possible. With a wet curd salt a little more than the rule by which you are running, so as to make up the loss that goes out with the whey.
CHEESE FOR THE BRITISH MARKET.
This quality of goods, generally known as “shipping cheese,” is made by the same process that we have described in this book with the exception that it is, or should be, worked down more. “Worked down” implies that a firmer cheese is produced, one cooked more, salted a trifle higher and soured more. These requisites lend a cheese body and prolong its keeping qualities. With all this, it must be mellow, close textured and fine flavored. The English consumer wants such a cheese, or he wants none. “A word to the wise is sufficient.”
SKIMMED CHEESE.
Making edible skimmed cheese is an effort to supply a constituent for the product that does not exist, namely, oleaginous matter. The butter or cream in milk is what gives rich flavor and mellow body to cheese. When a part or whole of this is removed by the skimmer, the depleted fluid, if manufactured into cheese, just as that containing all of the cream would be, will make dry, tasteless stuff. Skimmed cheese must be cooked, soured and salted less than full cream. Flat skims can often be scalded at 93° and 94° Fahrenheit. But, of course, this must be governed entirely by the rules relating to thorough cooking.
FLOATING CURD.
Floating curd emanates from the rankest known species of tainted milk. The curd is surfeited with offensive, poisonous gas, that holds in check the acid and will inhabit the curd until its life has died out. All the cheese maker can do is to wait patiently until its existence has ended and the curd, ceasing to be inflative, develops acid. Then grind and salt the usual amount, airing by thorough stirring for an hour or more, with doors and windows open, to expel the taint. Let it sour in the pack. If ground and salted before gas has left it, the cheese will huff up like puff balls.
BOXING CHEESE FOR MARKET.
After the cheese designed for shipment are selected, examine every one and look to it that there are no surface shortcomings; if there are, the discrepancy must be remedied. Aim to have the cheese go into the package neat and attractive in appearance. A firm, elastic rind, well oiled, and a spotless bandage cloth, if forming the cuticle of a squarely-built, well-shaped cheese, is all in the line of the appearance that is desired by dealers and retailers. In weighing the cheese, give good up weight, taking no account of anything less than a pound. Use the best quality of scale boards and boxes obtainable, and have the latter fit the cheese snugly. After a cheese is weighed, place a scale board on the top end and shove a box onto it. Flop box and cheese over and, as the latter settles into the case, mark the weight on the side of the box. If the box is too high, shave the rim down to the cheese surface and place on a scale board and then cover. It is imperative that the covers fit tightly and snugly, and that any superfluous rim on the box be shaved off. No cheese is properly prepared for transportation unless it is so tight in the box that it cannot shift and knock about. Brand the boxes in a neat, workman-like manner, having the lettering show plainly and distinctly. Then your cheese are ready for the freight car or the vessel’s hold.
Cheese are often slightly mouldy on their bandaged sides when cured in damp, warm weather. To obviate this, when boxing, rub the sides thoroughly with a dry, soft cloth and do not box until just before shipping. No cheese should be placed in boxes in hot weather until a few hours before transportation. Standing for several days in tight packages and exposed to a high temperature, will not only try the quality of cheese but will positively injure the flavor of the very best. If they could all go to their destination in refrigerator cars, this evil would be greatly ameliorated. With the facilities at hand, however, aim to place them on the market in as neat a shape as they rested on your curing room shelves.
THE HOT IRON TEST.
I do not know what cheese makers would do nowadays without the hot iron to guide them in evenly maturing curd. It is one of the most essential attributes of making. It should, of course, be most judiciously used.
In 1845, Mr. L. M. Norton, of Goshen, Conn., discovered that the acid in curd could be gauged by stringing threads from a heated iron. He kept the discovery a secret for a long time but at last divulged it.
To supply yourself with a handy instrument for testing acid, take a three-quarter inch bar of iron a foot long and set one end into a ferrule on a wooden handle. It can then be conveniently handled without burning the fingers. Heat the metal a little hotter than desired and then thrust for a moment into a bucket of water, to thoroughly clean the surface. Holding it in the left hand, take a piece of curd squeezed dry of whey and press against the iron. If it does not adhere at all, the curd is perfectly sweet, no matter how it may smell to you. If it clings slightly, you may be assured that acid is beginning to develop, so keep close watch of it. Curd ought never to string out threads more than one-fourth of an inch long before whey is drawn, and oftentimes less is desirable.
Have the iron at just the right temperature or you cannot make an accurate test. A right temperature implies that the iron is so hot that the curd will fry around the edges when pressed against it, but not so hot that it will scorch over.
Tainted and floating curds will often string threads six inches and more in length, and then not be fitted to grind and salt. As soon as acid has overcome the gaseous condition of such curd so that the inflation will subside, it is ready to grind, but not before. Cheese makers should not be afraid of souring and airing such curd too much.
MILK.
In the manufacture of cheese the constituents of milk demand our first attention, as we cannot intelligently study a subject without investigating its primary principles. Cow’s milk contains:
Water 864 parts. Nitrogenous matter (caseine and albumen) 43 ” Sugar of milk 52 ” Fat 37 ” Mineral salts 4 ” ————— 1,000
The solids represented above are in the form of minute globules, and the serum in which they float is the water or “whey.” It is to unite these globules and separate them from the whey that is the primary function of cheese making. It so happens that rennet, the active agent in this process, besides exerting an automatic, chemical action on milk, imparts to the solids new and vigorous properties that give cheese a medicinal value to the human stomach, namely, an inceptor of digestion. It is imperative that a cheese maker understands enough about milk to instantly detect the slightest change from its sweet, pure, normal condition. Milk as a fluid is highly sensitive to unclean odors, and when it absorbs them in a greater or less degree, the maker should, by an olfactory test, discover the taint. Milk that has been tainted by a retention of the animal heat, not having been cooled when freshly drawn, will give off a rank, burned smell, nauseous in the extreme. If the taint was absorbed from odors, the peculiar scent of the particular stench will be indelibly impressed on the fluid. Mature or sour milk is more to be desired for cheese manufacture than milk poisoned by taint. In fact, a _slight_ maturity of milk is necessary—or, at least, desirable—to produce a fine cheese, the same as mature cream is required to develop good butter, only in the former the “ripeness” must be scarcely perceptible, while in the latter it must be well advanced. All tainted milk, and all milk that is “old” and nearly sour, should be unconditionally rejected at the cheese factory for manufacture. Do not be afraid of financially losing by such a rule. It is none too stringent, and in the end it will give your goods a trade reputation that will be secure and impregnable. The idea that really good cheese can be made out of poor milk is disproved by chemistry and common sense.
SALT.
One of the most important factors in cheese making is the saline mineral known as salt. A cheese can be manufactured gilt-edged in every way, but if it contains no salt, an insufficient quantity of it or that which is of weak, inferior quality, it is simply a mass of perishable, nitrogenous matter that will soon go to putrefaction. Salt checks the growth of the lactic acid as quickly as a rush of air snuffs out a candle; therefore, it has complete control over the quality of the cheese in this direction. It preserves that quality for an indefinite time, provided it exists in a sufficient proportion and the cheese has been scientifically made. Then, again, salt gives firmness and flavor to the cheese.
Thus, perceiving that cheese, as a component of human food, could not exist without salt, the analogy between the purity of that article and the fine quality of cheese is at once apparent. It is needless to advise the use of nothing but a fine, pure grade of salt for savoring cheese. Perhaps, instead of needless, it is _needful_ to admonish manufacturers in this regard. I regret to say that I have observed many who held false ideas of economy about so cheap an article as this briny product. A difference of twenty-five cents on a barrel would turn their judgment in favor of the cheaper, coarser article, and, while really the losers thereby, they would feel complacent over a supposed gain.
It is just such little slights as this—substituting poor for good salt—that help make up the discrepancy in quality already perceptible in American cheese. The dairymen of this country possess the most advantageous position of any class of dairymen in the world. For years their milch cattle have been bred toward the extinction of beef characteristics, and toward the fostering and enlargement of lacteal tendencies, until now, in point of blood, the general average is high. Intelligence, skilled labor and ingenuity are at command and should so leaven the products of our dairies that they should stand above all competitors. Then, why be “Penny wise and pound foolish,” when so grand a prize as national trade reputation is at stake? Cheese manufacturers, employ only the most experienced and careful help obtainable, and be willing to pay them liberally for their services. Look only to _the quality_ of your cheese and let the ratio take care of itself. No matter if it takes eleven or twelve pounds of milk to produce a pound of cheese, provided that cheese is gilt-edged in every particular. Use nothing but first-class material, from the rennet, coloring matter and salt that goes into the cheese to the scale board and the box that covers it. Let the foreign demand wane if it wants to—we know how to relish good cheese here at home just as well as our English brothers, and, in the future, we are going to consume more of the product _per capita_, too.
HOME-MADE CHEESE.
Exhaustive rules for manufacturing cheese on a small scale at home occasionally go the rounds of the agricultural press. Some of them contain ideas of real merit and some do not. All middle-aged people who have in younger days lived in localities where dairying reached even modest pretensions can recall the sweet-savored cheese room, an adjunct of the kitchen, whose furnishing of primitive milk utensils was then considered ample for the housewife’s use. Associated dairies or factories soon came upon the stage, and their vast superiority of method, coupled with the adoption of the cheddar system, marked an era in cheese improvement, which said in effect, if not in words, that “home dairy cheese must go.” The innovation of factories undermined and swept out of existence this small fry of amateur production, because home dairymen would not or could not adopt the cheddar improvement and manipulate their milk with skilled labor. Dairies associated together under factory regime facilitated such an easy and quick disposal of one’s milk, and at such a greatly enhanced profit, that the obvious convenience and economy of the new order of things, more than any inimical characteristic it possessed, pulled down the one and set up the other. It matters not, though, to consumers in America or England, whether the cheese they eat is made under the roof of a farm house on a small scale, or in a mammoth factory on a large one, provided the quality is good. But there are serious drawbacks about making up milk in diminutive quantity that are hard to overcome. Let us discuss them and analyze their leading features:
I think it is safe to assume that not one person out of fifty who attempts to make home dairy cheese to-day but will manufacture it just as his fathers did fifty years ago. In their minds the whole process is covered by coagulation of the milk, quick cooking of the curd, salting it and pressing it. There is no thought of having the milk moderately mature, the curd thoroughly cooked and then properly soured, and the salt judiciously applied. The amateur knows nothing about the fine yet necessary points of manufacture, and so his cheese lacks the fine but requisite points of quality to insure it trade recognition. We all like good cheese to eat, but in this country, thanks to the skimmer, it is getting so that the good article is very scarce and promises to be scarcer if the skimmer’s relations with the factory are not soon done away with.
A great many readers who live in non-cheese manufacturing districts appreciate mellow, rich cheese when they sometimes at long intervals find it on their groceryman’s counter, and vow that they would eat the article more if the price was cheapened and the general quality raised. You should, if you live a hundred miles or so from any factory, and if you have a few cows and your neighbor has a few more, club together and make up some cheese for your own use. You have a vivid remembrance of how your mother used to manage it years ago. Discard the wooden tub that she used, for now we have tin vessels that are far preferable. Get two or three hundred pounds of milk together, if possible, but do not rob it of a bit of cream—keep that well worked into the fluid. Have a heavy bottomed tin box with round corners, made at the tinner’s, one that is so shaped that it will fit into a large caldron kettle and yet leave a couple of inches of space between its outside surface and the iron sides of the kettle. This space is for water, which should be used as the best conductor to raise the temperature of the milk. Set the kettle in a brick or stone arch, in which kindle a slow fire. With the tin vessel filled with milk, and water about it in the way described, you have a cheese vat in miniature. Have a thermometer handy. Stir the milk often and do not let it get above 85° before setting. Draw the fire out before it has fairly reached that temperature, as the after heat will raise it a degree or two. Do not trust to your knowledge of the strength of rennet. Buy some Rennetine and carefully follow directions as to the amount necessary to coagulate 100 pounds of milk. Work the rennet in thoroughly and then cover the little “vat” up with a piece of sheeting. It is very important to have just enough rennet as too much or too little will spoil the cheese. Have your tinner make you two curd knives, one with perpendicular and the other with horizontal blades. When the coagulated milk will break squarely over the finger, and whey begins to start around the edges, cut it quite finely with the knives, using first the perpendicular and then the horizontal one. Raise the temperature slowly, not to 100° or 110°, but to a point where the curd is thoroughly cooked but not to dryness. Stir the curd and whey up at frequent intervals to keep it from packing. Do not hustle it into the press now just because you have it cooked, unless it is sour. Remember that the curd must mature, or, in other words, generate acid. Therein lies the future good quality of the cheese. Do not rely on your olfactory sense to gauge the sourness. Press a little piece of the curd against a hot iron. When it pulls out strings one-half of an inch long in spring, one inch long in midsummer and one-half inch in fall, it is sour enough to be salted. Have the whey all dipped off and the curd drained before it has reached a maturity sufficient to salt. Do not salt in hot weather higher than one-fourth of a pound to a hundred pounds of milk, and in spring and fall less. As you have, at the most, only a little curd to manipulate, do not let it get cold but put it in the hoop at a temperature of at least 75°. Do not try to save over curd for another batch the next day. Better have two twenty-pound cheese in two days than one forty-pounder during the same time. You cannot graft new curd onto old without lowering the quality of the whole. After you have a curd in the hoop do not try to press it with stone weights because there is so little of it. Have a small press frame and a screw for that purpose. These small cheese will cure quickly. Keep the ends well oiled, and lay them on a shelf in a warm room, where they should be turned and rubbed every day.
The foregoing pointers are intended for persons who have some previous knowledge of making dairy cheese, and, therefore, minute details of explanation have not been given. The trouble with most home dairy makers is that they do not realize the importance of souring the curd, and so make weak, off-flavored, perishable stock.
OCTOBER CHEESE.
How are we to make as good cheese in October as we have been turning out in September? This is the mental query that will sometimes arise in the minds of makers whose experience is not measured by length of years. A one-twelfth turn of the wheel of the yearly chronological table ought not to produce such a vast change in lacteal affairs as to exert a radical change in the manufacturing process. Of course, the artificial subdivisions of the season would be of but small moment in the case if they were not to a certain extent analogous to natural atmospheric changes. As September wanes into October the summer is insidiously but surely attaining its maturity. The grass roots having in a prolific manner fulfilled their annual mission, fail to send forth the tender blade of earlier months. Blighting frosts sear the pastures and sap the succulence from the feed. It is but natural that such an alteration in climatic influence should leave its effect on the milk. It is a maxim of cheese making that you must work milk according to its condition, not expecting one invariable rule to cover the whole science, but keeping in mind numberless distinct methods of treatment, for instant application as exigencies arise.