CHEESE 311 



That of Brie, named from the district where the 

 best is made, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, 

 is a large and thin soft cake, made of sheep's milk. 

 It is salted on both sides with finely powdered salt, 

 and is left to soak for two or three days in the salted 

 liquid that drips from it. The salting finished, the 

 cheeses are packed in a cask with alternate layers of 

 straw, and are left alone for several months. Then 

 there starts a kind of fermentation, which is the be- 

 ginning of putrefaction, and which develops new 

 qualities. The curd loses its odor and insipid taste 

 of milk-food, to acquire the heightened flavor and 

 strong smell of cheese ; its mass becomes more oily, 

 even partially fluid, and changes under the rind to a 

 liquid pap of creamy appearance. This work of 

 modification is called refining. It has gone just far 

 enough when the liquid part under the rind is of a 

 pleasant taste. The cheeses are then taken out of 

 the cask and are ready for eating. 



"This first example shows us that cheese acquires 

 its peculiar qualities through an incipient deteriora- 

 tion. Before this putrefaction sets in the cheese is 

 simply curd, sweetish, insipid, without pronounced 

 odor; after this process it has the odor, the taste, in 

 fact all that is required to make it really cheese. 

 But the putrefaction, once started artificially, does 

 not stop where we should like it to stop. It goes on 

 all the time, slowly indeed if we take some precau- 

 tions, and the cheese, smelling more and more, and 

 tasting stronger and stronger, ends by becoming a 

 mass of rottenness. All cheese, therefore, when it 



