No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 749 



grained salts, the former owing to greater solubility passed more 

 readily out of the butter during working and proved the less econ- 

 omical. An ideal butter salt should be pure white, of a uniform, 

 thin, flaky grain of medium size, without ill odor, and be nearly free 

 from the bitter salts and dirt. An ideal cheese salt may be similarly 

 described save that the size of the grain may be larger. No one 

 brand stands first in all these respects. "There are others" than the 

 one you use. 



Wherein has cheese making practice been put upon a higher plane 



by scientific investigation ? 



1. The phenomena of the ripening processes are better under- 

 stood. 



2. Canned cheese, paraffined cheese and cheese prints have been 

 developed. 



The causes of the changes brought about in cheese by the process 

 known as ripening have been in part determined within the past few 

 years. Up to recent times hypotheses were plenty, but facts few. It 

 was thought that bacteria ripened cheese, but the process seems 

 more likely to be at best but in part bacterial. It is now deemed 

 that the natural and inherent enzymes of the fresh milk, — galactase 

 and its associates, — and the pepsin of the rennet extract, or the 

 scale pepsin of the drug stores which is now used in lieu of rennet in 

 some factories, are also important factors; that all three working 

 together are probably the main ripening agents, but that the en- 

 vironment — particularly as regard temperature — of the ripening 

 cheese more than any other one thing gives character to the final 

 product. 



A number of interesting points have been brought out of late 

 which must need be but barely referred to. The underlying reason 

 for the hot iron test, the causes of slimy, slippery curd, of gassy 

 or floating curds, and of "leakiness," the rationale of the quick ripen- 

 ing and the slow ripening cheese processes having been developed; 

 and the relationships between temperature, moisture, varying 

 amounts of rennet or salt, on the one hand, and flavor and texture on 

 the other, have been determined and the causes thereof have been 

 working out. In short the Wisconsin and New York Stations have 

 done the cheese industry a mighty service in their abstruse, high 

 technical work and have afforded excellent examples of the prac- 

 ticability of pure science. 



Europeans eat cheese; Americans tnste it. The consumption of 

 cheese in this country is relatively small. It furnishes only 0.4 per 

 cent, of the total food, 1.6 per cent, of the total protein and 1.6 per 

 cent, of the total fat of the average American diet. There are sev- 

 eral good reasons for this situation. One of them is the small pro- 

 portion of the cheese made in this country which is put up in con- 

 venient form. The bulk of it, probably 90 per cent, is marketed in 

 slices, cut by the pound from large cheeses, slices which fail to 

 keep well owing to the large surface exposed to the air. A more 

 convenient and attractive method of marketing cheese ought to in- 

 crease its consumption. Canned cheese and print cheese are two 

 recent contributions towards the solution of this problem. 



Print cheese has been made for years at the Wisconsin Station. 

 The ordinary Cheddar curd is placed in a rectangular mold and 

 printed by pressure. Any form and size of print may be used. The 



