]0-H PRACTICE OP AGRICULTURE. Part I1T, 



7098, Potato dkette is ■ German manufacture, of which then are three sorts. One of the best is thua 



prepared: Belect meal] potatoes, and wily half dreti them Ineteamj for by bursting their flavour and 



efficacy are diminithed reel them, and then grate or beat tl Into a One pulp. To three parts of this 



masi add two parti ol twee) curd, knead and mix them, and allow them t" stand three days in warm, and 

 four or five dayi hi cold, weather; form into email piece* like the Westphalia cheese*, and dry in the tame 

 manner. A itill better sort "i potato cheese is formed of one part or potatoes and three of the curd of 



sheep's milk This sort is -aid In exceed in taste the beat cheese made ill Holland, and to possess the 

 additional advantage that it improves with age, and generates no vermin. 



7097. The preparations of milk, which can neither be included under butter nor 

 cheese, are various, and constitute a class of wholesome luxuries or rural drinks. We 

 shall do little more than enumerate them, and refer for further details to the cookery 

 books, 



7<>jS. Curdi iiml whey is merely coagulated new milk stirred up, and the curd and whey eaten together, 

 with or without sugar and salt 



7099. Curds on.l cream ; lure the whey is removed and cream substituted, with or without sugar. The 

 milk coagulated i> often previously skimmed. 



71m. Sour cream , cream allowed to stand in a vat till it becomes sour, when it is eaten with fresh cream 

 and sugar, or new milk and sugar, and is found delicious. 



7HH. Corttorvhin cream, so named from a village of that name, two miles from Edinburgh, from which 

 the latter city is supplied with it. The milk of three or four days is put together with the cream, till it 

 begins to get sour and coagulated, when the whey is drawn oft' and fresh cream added. It is, therefore, 

 simply tour curd and fresh cream. It is eaten with sugar as a supper dish, and in great repute in the 



north, , . , , 



7102. Devonshire cream is a term applied in the county of that name, sometimes to sour curd, and some- 

 times to sour cream ; in either case mixed with new milk or fresh cream, and eaten with sugar like the 

 lorstorphin cream. . «...,.«. 



71Uo. Devonshire scalded or clouted cream. The milk is put into tin or earthen pans, holding about ten 

 or tweive quarts each. The evening's meal is placed the following morning, and the morning's milk is 

 placed in the afternoon, upon a broad iron plate heated by a small furnace, or otherwise over stoves, 

 where, exposed to a gentle tire, they remain until after the whole body of cream is supposed to have 

 formed upon the surface; which being gentlv removed by the edge of a spoon or ladle, small air bubbles 

 will begin to rise that denote the approach oCa boiling heat, when the pans must be removed from otl'the 

 heated plate or stoves. The cream remains upon the milk in this state until quite cold, when it may be 

 removed into a churn, or, as is more frequently the case, into an open vessel, and then moved by hand 

 with a stick about a foot long, at the end of which is fixed a sort of peel from four to six inches in diameter, 

 and with which about twelve pounds of butter may be separated from the buttermilk at a time. The 

 butter in both cases being found to separate much more freely, and sooner to coagulate into a mass, than 

 in the ordinary way, when churned from raw cream that may have been several days in gathering, and 

 at the same time will answer a more valuable purpose in preserving, which should be first salted in the 

 usual way, then placed in convenient-sized egg-shaped earthen crocks, and always kept covered with a 

 pickle, made strong enough to float and buoy up about half out of the brine a new-laid egg. This cream, 

 before churning, is the celebrated clouted cream of Devon. Although it would be reasonable to suppose 

 that the scalding the milk must have occasioned the whole of the oily or unctuous matter to form on the 

 surface, still experience shows that this is not the case, and that the scalded skim-milk is much richer and 

 better for the purposes of suckling, and makes far better cheese than the raw skim-milk does. The ordi- 

 nary produce of milk per day, for the first twenty weeks after calving, is three gallons, and is equal to the 

 producing of one pound and a quarter of butter daily by the scalding process. The scald skim-milk is 

 valued at one penny farthing per quart, either for cheese-making or feeding hogs. The sum of the trials 

 procured to be made on the milk in several parts of this district gives an average of twelve pints ol milk 

 to ten ounces of butter (.less than ten quarts to a pound of sixteen ounces). When cheese is to be made, 

 great care is taken that the milk is not heated so far as to produce bubbles under the cream. [Vancouver'"! 

 Survey of Devon, p. 214.) . . , 



7104 Clotted cream. The milk, when drawn from the cow, is suffered to remain in the coolers till it 

 begins to get sour and the whole is coagulated. It is then stirred and the whey drawn off, or the cream 

 (now in clots among the curdi and the curd removed. 



7105 Hatted kilt. A gallon of sour buttermilk is put in the bottom of the milk-pail, and a quart or 

 more of milk drawn from the cow into it bv the milk-maid. The new warm milk, as it mixes with the 

 acid of the sour milk, coagulates, and being lighter, rises to the top and forms a creamy scum or hat over 

 the other ■ whence the name. This surface stratum is afterwards taken off and eaten with sugar. 



71(in Milk tyUabub is formed in a similar manner over a glass or two of wme, and the whole is then 

 eaten with sugar. Both sorts may be formed by those who have no cow, by warming the sweet or new 

 milk, and squirting it into the wine or sour milk. 



7107 Skim-milk is milk from which the cream has been removed. When this has been done within 

 twelve or fifteen hours from the time of milking, it is sweet and wholesome, and fit either for being heated 

 or coagulated in order to make cheese, &c, or used as it is with other food ; but if allowed to remain 

 twenty or thirty hours, it becomes sour, coagulates spontaneously, the whey separates from the curd ; 

 and if it remain a certain period, generallv three weeks longer, in a warm temperature, the vinous ter. 

 mentation takes place, and a wine or a liquor, from which ardent spirit may be distilled, is produced. 



7108. Buttermilk is that which remains in the chum after the butter has been taken ott. \\ hen butter 

 has been made from cream alone, it is seldom of much value ; but where the whole milk has been churned, 

 and no water poured in during the process, it is a very wholesome cooling beverage. Some preler it when 

 it has stood a few .lavs and become s'Hir. In England it is chiefly given to pigs; but in Ireland it forms 

 a mtv common diluter to porridge, potatoes, oat cakes, peas cakes, and other food of the labouring classes, 

 and especially of the farm servants. In the Orkney Islands and other northern parts ot Britain, as well 

 a- in Ireland, buttermilk is sometimes kept till it undergoes the vinous fermentation, when it is used to 

 procure intoxication. 



7109. S 'our milk, Alton observes, requires considerable care in the manufacturing, and the use ol the 

 thermometer ought never to be omitted. " When the operation is carried on at a low temperature, the 

 milk swells when agitated in thechurn, appears of a white colour, throws up air bubbles, and makes, when 

 agitated or churned, a rattling noise. But when it is in proper temperature the milk does not swell or 

 rise in the churn, it is of a straw or cream colour, emits a much softer sound, anil does not cast up air 

 bubbles so plentifully as when colder. When milk is either overheated or churned too hastily, the butter 

 is always soft ami of a white colour. From two to three hours is a proper time for performing the oper- 

 ation of churning. In the manufacture of sour milk, and in every branch of dairy husbandry, the utmost 

 attention to cleanliness is Indispensably necessary. The milk must no doubt become sour, and even 

 coagulate before it is churned ; but if that souring is not natural, but brought on by any foulness in the 

 \cssels through which the milk passes, or bv any sort of admixture, or even by tin' milk being kept in a 



i ,, n]ace in one too hot or too cold, or even by exposure to an impure atmosphere, the acidity will not 



be a natural one, nor the taste of the milk or butter agreeable, but acrid and unpalatable. Every vessel 

 through which till' milk passes must be as clean, and every part where' it is kept before heme churned 

 must be as free from dampness, anil every species of impurity or bad air, as if it were intended to keep the 



