CHEESE OP DIFFERENT QUALITIES — HOW OBTAINED. 573 



from its inner surface some substances which, if allowed to remain, might 

 afterwards act injuriously upon the flavour or upon tlie other qualities of 

 the cheese. 



§ 20. Of the ^circumstances by which the quality of cheese is affected. 



All cheese consists essentially of the curd mixed with a certain por- 

 tion of the fatty matter and of the sugar of milk. But differences in the 

 quality of the milk, in the proportions in which the several constituents 

 of milk are mixed together, or in the general mode of dairy manage- 

 ment, give rise to varieties of cheese almost without number. Nearly 

 every dairy district produces one or more qualities of cheese peculiar to 

 itself. It will not be without interest to attend briefly to some of these 

 causes of diversity. 



1°. Natural differences in the milk. — It is obvious that whatever gives 

 rise to natural differences in the quality of the milk must affect also that 

 of the cheese prepared from it. If the milk be poor in butter, so must 

 the cheese be. If the pasture be such as to give a milk rich in cream, 

 the cheese will partake of the same quality. If the herbage or other food 

 affect the taste of the milk or cream, it will also modify the flavour of the 

 cheese. 



2°. Milk of different animals. — So the milk of different animals 

 will give cheese of unlike qualities. The ewe-milk cheeses of Tuscany, 

 Naples, and Languedoc, and those of goat's milk made on Mont Dor 

 and elsewhere, are celebrated for qualities which are not possessed by 

 cheeses prepared from cow's milk in a similar way. Buffalo milk also 

 gives a cheese of peculiar qualities, which is manufactured in some parts 

 of the Neapolitan territory. 



Other kinds of cheese agam are made from mixtures of the milk of dif- 

 f&ren* animals. Thus the strong tasted cheese of Lecca and the cele- 

 brated Roquefort cheese are prepared from mixtures of goat with ewe- 

 milk, aiid the cheese of Mont Cenis* from both of these mixed with the 

 milk of the cow.f 



3°. Creamed or uncreamed milk. — Still further differences are pro- 

 duced according to the proportion of cream which is left in or is added to 

 the milk. Thus if cream only be employed, we liave the rich cream- 

 cheese which must be eaten in a comparatively recent state. Or, if the 

 cream of the previous night's milking be added to the new milk of the 

 morning, we may have such cheese as the Stilton of England, or the 

 small, soft, and rich Brie cheeses, so much esteemed in France. If the 

 entire milk only be used, we have such cheeses as the Cheshire, the 

 Double Gloucester, the Cheddar, the Wiltshire, and the Dunlop cheeses 

 of Britain, the Kinnegad cheese, I believe, of Ireland, and the Goudaand 

 Edam cheeses of Holland. Even here, however, it makes a difference 

 whether the warm milk from the cow is curdled alone, as at Gouda and 

 Edam, or whether it is mixed with the milk of the evening before, as is 

 generally done in Cheshire and Ayrshire. Many persons are of opin- 

 ion that cream, which has once been separated, can never be so well 

 '• 

 * Lecca U a province in the Eastern pail of the Neapolitan territory ; Roquefort, a town 

 in the pastoral department of Aveiron, in the South of France, famed for its sheep; and 

 Mont Cenis, a mountain in Savoy, 

 t The milk of 2 goats is mixed with that of 20 sheep and 5 cows. 



