434 BRITISH HUSBANDRY. [Ch. XXXVII. 



milk *. The date, however, is not stated, and it probably was at that season 

 when at the highest degree of perfection. 



Such are the most usual modes of manufacturing the superior qualities of 

 cheese to which we have alluded ; in which the difference employed is in 

 some cases very striking. Thus, in the preparation of rennet, the bag 

 itself is in most parts of England generally used, while in Scotland the 

 liquid decoction extracted from it is so much stronger that it occasions the 

 curd to coagulate, as we have just seen, within fifteen minutes ; whereas, 

 in Cheshire, it occupies an hour and a half, and not unfrequently more than 

 two hours. Now, it is not only the delay which is thus disadvantageous ; 

 for it is well known that the degree of heat at which the curd is set is one 

 of the nicest points in cheese-making, and we cannot imagine how that can 

 be properly regulated if it be allowed to stand so long cooling in the cheese- 

 tub. 



The temperature to which the last night's milk is heated when there is 

 not sufficient to make a cheese at one meal, and the mode in which the 

 cream is managed, differ also in various dairies ; nor does there appear any 

 objection to the practice of making the last night's milk into cheese, pro- 

 vided it be so gradually heated as that the cream does not run the risk of 

 being converted into oil, as it does if too suddenly heated : yet we believe 

 that, when once separated from the milk, the cream can never again be so 

 completely blended with it as to be entirely retained in the curd when set ; 

 it, consequently, runs off with the whey, and leaves the cheese of inferior 

 quality. 



The skewering of the curd, as practised in Cheshire, is unknown in most 

 other places ; and the labour of several women employed for three or four 

 hours in thrusting or hand-pressing it into the vat, is an operation which is 

 generally managed in other dairies with a couple of maids, and in one- 

 fourth of the time. 



The hoving of the cheese is attributed by Mr. Holland to the imperfec- 

 tion of its fermentation, occasioned in a great measure by the store-rooms 

 — though commonly placed over the cow-house — not being sufficiently 

 heated, so as to occasion its sweating 5 yet Mr. Alton — in his account of 

 the Dunlop cheese — objects to heated stores, as causing an improper degree 

 of fermentation ; and says that " no such thing as sweating is known in 

 the Scots' dairies." Neither does he imagine that feeding the cows on 

 clover, or any other herbage — which Mr. Holland supposes to have that 

 effect — can be the cause of cheese becoming hoved ; nor that it would be 

 less subject to heave if it were made of all cold or all warm milk, It is, 

 however, not improbably frequently occasioned by the use of a too large 

 quantity of rennet. 



The rankness of flavour, which is mostly attributed to the impurity of 

 the rennet, is by others ascribed to the nature of the pasture. In this, both 

 suppositions may be right; for it must be evident that it may be readily 

 occasioned by the use of a large quantity of badly-prepared rennet ; and we 

 learn from the management of a dairy in Ayrshire, where every means 

 were taken to avoid the fault, that the cheese still maintained an unpleasant 

 taste of the same description ; which could, therefore, have only arisen from 

 the herbage. It was, however, at length uniformly overcome by throwing 

 about half a tea-spoonful of saltpetre into the pail before the cows were 



• See the Report of a Gloucestershire Vale Farm, in the Farmer's Series of the 

 Library of Useful Knowledge, No. 21, p. 35. 



