CHAPTER VIII. 

 CHEESE- MAKING. 



English Cheeses. Cheddar Cheese. In "The Fylde." Cheshire Cheese. 

 Derbyshire Cheese. Leicestershire Cheese. Stilton Cheese. Other 

 kinds of British Cheese. 



CHEESE-MAKING is a complex art and a difficult one, while 

 butter-making is simple and easy. Cheese-making seeks to 

 preserve for leisurely consumption all the valuable elements of 

 milk, which is a fluid subject to early decomposition : all the 

 valuable elements, that is, except the milk sugar, nearly the 

 whole of which passes off in the whey. Cheese-making deals 

 with the casein, as well as with the butter, which milk contains ; 

 and as casein is an albuminous compound, the composition of 

 which has been given in a previous chapter, it is the treacherous 

 and unstable element which taxes the ingenuity of the cheese- 

 maker to arrest and postpone its natural tendency to decay. 



The art of cheese-making is to some extent analogous to the 

 process of digestion of milk in the stomach, in this way : milk 

 is coagulated in the cheese tub as it is in the stomach, and in 

 both cases by the same agent viz., rennet. Here the analogy 

 ceases to be exact, for in cheese-making there is not the pan- 

 creatic juice of the animal to convert the coagulum into an 

 emulsion. The process of digestion ceases in the cheese, and 

 the course of decomposition is prolonged through the period 

 known as the ripening period. Ripe cheese, like ripe fruit, is 

 on the verge of decay, and some persons do not consider cheese 

 ripe until it is in an advanced stage of actual decay. The art 

 of the cheese-maker is employed to convert milk into a solid 



