12 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No.l, 



benches about seven days, it is again washed in 

 warm water with a brush, and wiped dry. In a 

 couple of hours after it is scoured all over with 

 sweet whey hatter; which operation is afterwards 

 frequently repeated; and lastly, it is deposited in 

 the cheese or store room, (which ought to be mod- 

 erately warm, and sheltered from the access of air, 

 lest the cheese should crack,) and turned every 

 day, till it become sufficiently hard and firm.* 

 They require to be kept a long time; and it' not 

 forced by artificial means, will scarcely be suffi- 

 ciently ripe under two or three years, or even 

 more. The Dutch make their cheese nearly in 

 the same manner, excepting that they substitute 

 the marine acid, or spirit of sea salt, which imparts 

 to Dutch cheese the peculiarly sharp and salt fla- 

 vor for which it has long been remarked; and that 

 they leave out the cream. 



In Mr. Holland's very intelligent Survey of 

 Cheshire, the following remarks occur on the prac- 

 tice of the Cheshire dairies, li'om which some im- 

 portant hints may be gathered respecting both 

 that and the general process of making cheese. 

 He says, "this is generally admitted, that not 

 only the quantity, but the quality of the curd as to 

 texture, (toughness, or otherwise,) depends, in a 

 great measure, on the length of time the cheese 

 is in coming; and that the time again depends on 

 the quantity and strength of the coagulum used, 

 the state of" the atmosphere, and the heat of the 

 milk when put together. In this stage of the art, 

 where a degree of accurate certainty seems to be 

 required, there is no other guide but the hand, and 

 the external feelings. The thermometer of a 

 Cheshire dairy woman is constantly at her fingers' 

 ends. Accordingly, the heat of the milk when set 

 is endeavored to be regulated by the supposed 

 warmth of the room and the heat of the external 

 air; having reference also to the quantity and 

 strength of the steep; so as that the milk may be 

 the proper length of time in sufficiently coagula- 

 ting; which is generally thought to be about an 

 hour and a half. The evening's milk — of sup- 

 pose 20 cows — having stood all night in the cool- 

 er and brass pans, the cheese maker (in summer,) 

 about six o'clock in the morning, carefully skims 

 off the cream from the whole of it, observing first 

 to take off all the froth and bubbles, and the rest of 

 the cream is put into a brass pan. While the 

 dairy woman is thus employed, the servants are 

 milking the cows, having previously lighted a fire 

 under the furnace, which is half full of water. As 

 soon as the night's milk is skimmed, it is all car- 

 ried into the cheese tub, except about three-fourths 

 of a brass pan full, (three to four gallons,) which 

 is immediately placed in the furnace of hot water, 

 in the pan, and is made scalding hot; then half of 

 the milk thus heated is poured to the cream, which, 

 as before observed, had been already skimmed 

 into another pan. By this means all the cream is 

 liquified and dissolved, so as apparently to form one 

 homogeneous or uniform liquid, and in that state 

 it is poured into the cheese tub. But before this is 

 done, several bowls or vessels full of new milk, or 



* The cheese rooms in Cheshire are generally placed 

 over the cow houses on a floor strewed with rushes. 

 This is done, in order to afford them, from the heat of 

 the cattle below, that uniform and moderate degree of 

 temperature, which is deemed essentia) to the proper 

 Opening of cheese. 



perhaps the whole morning's milk, will generally 

 have been poured into the cheese tub. 



"In some celebrated dairies, however, they do 

 not, during the whole summer, heat a drop of the 

 night's milk; only dissolve the cream in a brass 

 pan floated or suspended in a furnace of hot water* 

 In other dairies, they heat one-third, one-half, or 

 even more than that of the previous night's milk; 

 but in all, they are careful to liquify or melt the 

 cream well before it is mixed with the milk in the 

 tub;* and whatever may be the general custom in 

 any given dairy respecting the heating of the 

 milk, the practice varies according to the weather. 

 It is generally on poor clay lands that the milk 

 most requires warming: on good rich soils, it will 

 not bear much heating; at least, by so doing, the 

 process of cheese-making is rendered more diffi- 

 culty 



In making Gloucester cheese, as well as other 

 kinds of thin, or toasting-cheese, known as the 

 Trent-side and Cottonham, the milk is poured into 

 the proper vessel, immediately after it has been 

 drawn from the cow; but being thought too hot in 

 the summer, it is lowered to the due degree of 

 heat by the addition of skimmed milk; or, if that, 

 will not do, by pouring in water. When the curd 

 is come, it is broken with a double cheese-knife, 

 and also with the hand, to separate it from the 

 whey which is ladled oil'. The curd is then put 

 into vats, which are submitted to the action of the 

 press for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till 

 the remaining whey is extracted. It is next re- 

 moved into the cheese-tubs, again broken small, 

 and scalded with a pailful of water, lowered with 

 whey in the proportion of three parts of water to 

 one of whey, and the whole is briskly stirred. 

 After standing a few minutes for the curd to settle, 

 the liquor is strained off, and the curd collected into 

 a vat, and when the latter is about half full, a little 

 salt is sprinkled over and worked into the cheese. 

 The vat is now filled up, and the whole mass of 

 cheese turned twice or thrice in it, the edges being 

 pared, and middle rounded up at each turning. 

 Lastly, the cheese is put into a cloth, and, after 

 undergoing another pressure, it is carried to the 

 shelves, where it is turned, in general, once a day, 

 till it become sufficiently close and firm to admit of 

 its being washed. The only material difference is, 

 that Gloucester and Trent-side are rather thicker 

 than the Cottonham — which is not more than an 

 inch and a half in depth, and is therefore sooner 



* The practice in this respect is different in Scotland, 

 in districts of which country the manufacture of cheese, 

 particularly the Dunlop, has been carried to great per- 

 fection. There the cream, when separated from the 

 milk, is put into the curd-vat cold, and brought, by the 

 admixture of warm milk, to the general warmth of the 

 mass at setting the curd. Mr Aiton is of opinion, that 

 by melting the cream, much of the oily matter it con- 

 tains is carried off with the whey, and impoverishes 

 the cheese: but he admits that he has not had sufficient 

 experience of that practice to enable him to decide on 

 its comparative merit with the Scotch method. 



f This although the opinion of Marshall and other 

 celebrated writers, as well as that of Mr. Holland, 

 is contradicted by Mr. Aiton, who says, "I never 

 understood that the milk of cows so fed, (on poor clays, 

 or even wild waste land, or moss,) required to be heat- 

 ed more than that of cows fed on the warmest valleys 

 or richest haughs in our best cultivated districts." — ^ 

 Dairy Husbandry, p. 128. 



