LACTIC STARTERS 51 



this method, if the milk selected for the large starter is 

 poor, the mother starter for the next day will be the same. 

 It is very difficult by this method to carry a uniform, 

 high quality mother starter. 



There is danger that the container used for the mother 

 starter may not be sterile, and there is also danger of 

 contamination in transferring the milk. 



3. Another practice is to hold over some of the large 

 starter used to-day for mother starter. This is by far 

 the easiest method. By this practice, there is no cer- 

 tainty of the quality of the starter, because there is little 

 or no control of the mother starter. If the large starter 

 is for some reason not good, there is no separate reserve 

 of mother starter on which to rely. 



73. Starter score-cards. The use of a score-card tends 

 to analyze the observations in such a way as to emphasize 

 all the characteristics desired in the starter. Such an 

 analysis seeks to minimize the personal factor and pro- 

 duce a standardization of the quality. The score-card 

 finally reduces the qualities of the starter to a numerical 

 basis for ease of comparison. Many score-cards have 

 been proposed but the one preferred by the authors is 

 that used by the Dairy Department of the New York 

 State College of Agriculture, which is as follows : 



CORNELL SCORE-CARD 



Flavor 50 Clean, desirable acid. 



Aroma 20 Clean, agreeable acid. No undesir- 

 able aroma. 



Acidity 20 0.6 per cent-0.8 per cent. 



Body 10 Before breaking up: jelly-like, close, 



absence of gas holes. No free 

 whey. After breaking up : 

 smooth, creamy, free from gran- 

 ules or flakes. 



