THE AGE OF RENNET. 



333 



because this must be determined by its quality and its 

 strength. Something like the following quantity is, 

 however, taken : In a sixty-quart vat are placed about 

 fifty rennets, prepared by drying, washing, and cutting, 

 and a clear salt brine or butter-pickle of twenty to 

 twenty-five degrees strength is added. In smaller quan- 

 tities the proportion of rennet is about one and a half 

 quarts to a rennet, or even less. This dried maw can be 

 bought everywhere in packages of twenty-five pieces 

 each. 



One great point in cheese-making is to have a suffi- 

 cient quantity of good rennet in store ; for the older it 

 grows the more powerful and effective it becomes, and 

 the experienced cheese-makers, studying their own 

 interests, know very well how difficult, hurtful, and 

 time-wasting, it is to use fresh or new rennet. The asser- 

 tion sometimes made that they use muriatic acid instead 

 of rennet for curding the milk in Holland rests on an 

 error, at least so far as the present methods are con- 

 cerned. In earlier times, and for the poorest kinds, as 

 the Jews' cheese, muriatic acid was more or less used. 



At the present time, 

 the rennet for those 

 cheeses is prepared 

 from the stomachs of 

 calves some days old. 

 When the curd has 

 sufficiently come, and 

 has all been thorough- 

 ly broken, the dairy- 

 woman puts a four- 

 cornered linen cloth, 

 called the cheese- 

 cloth, which is used only for this purpose, and is 

 only loosely woven, upon a small strong ladder laid 



