now THE WHEY IS SEPARATED. 677 



cheese can scarcely fail to be in some measure different from that which 

 is prepared with ordinary rennet. 



8°. The way in which the curd is treated. — It is usual in our best 

 cheese districts carefully and slowly to separate the curd from the whey — 

 not to hasten the separation, lest a larger portion of the fatty matter should 

 be squeezed out of the curd and the cheese should thus be rendered poorer 

 than usual. But in some places the practice prevails of washing the 

 curd with hot water after the whey has been partially separated from it. 



Thus at Gouda in Holland, after the greater part of the whey has been 

 gradually removed, a quantity of hot water is added, and allowed to re- 

 main upon it for at least a quarter of an hour. The heat makes the 

 cheese more solid and causes it to keep better. 



In Italy, again, the so-called pear-shaped cacdo-cavallo cheeses and 

 the round palloni cheeses of Gravina, in the Neapolitan territory, are 

 made from curd, which, after being scalded with boiling whey, is cut into 

 slices, kneaded in boiling water, worked with the hand till it is perfectly 

 tenacious and elastic, and then made into shapes. The water in which 

 the curd is washed, after standing 24 hours, throws up much oily mat- 

 ter, which is skimmed off' and made into butter. 



The varieties of cheese prepared by these methods no doubt derive the 

 peculiar characters upon which their reputation depends from the treat- 

 ment to which the curd is subjected — but it is obvious that none of them 

 can be so rich as a cheese from the same milk would be, if manufactured 

 in a Cheshire, a Wiltshire, or an Ayrshire dairy. 



9°. The separation of the whey is a part of the process upon which the 

 quality of the cheese in a considerable degree depends. In Cheshire 

 more time and attention is devoted to the perfect extraction of the whey 

 than in almost any other district. Indeed, when it is considered that the 

 whey contains sugar and lactic acid, which may undergo decomposition, 

 and a quantity of rennet which may bring on fermentation — by both of 

 which processes the flavour of the cheeses must be considerably affected 

 — it will appear of great importance that the whey should be as com- 

 pletely removed from the curd as it can possibly be. To aid in effecting 

 this a curd-mill, for chopping it fine after the whey is strained off", is in 

 use in many of the large English dairies, and a very ingenious, and I 

 believe effectual, pneumatic cheese-press for sucking out the whey was 

 invented by the late Sir John Robinson, of Edinburgh. [Transactions 

 and Prize Essays of the Highland Society, vol. x., p. 204.] 



But the way in which the whey is separated is not a matter of indif- 

 ference, and has much influence upon the quality of the cheese. Thus 

 in Norfolk, according to Marshall, when the curd is fairly set, the dairy- 

 maid bares her arm, plunges it into the curd, and with the help of her 

 wooden ladle breaks up minutely "and intimately mixes the curd with the 

 whey. This she does for 10 or 15 minutes, after which the curd is al- 

 lowed to subside, and the whey is drawn off". By ' this agitation 

 the whey must carry off" more of the butter and the cheese must be 

 poorer. 



In Cheshire and Ayrshire, again, the curd is cut with a knife, but 1%: 

 gently used and slowly pressed till it is dry enough to be chopped fine, an:', 

 thus more of the oily matter is retained. On the same principle, in making 

 the Stilton cheese, the curd is not cut or broken at all, but is pressed 



