CHEESE MAKING. 87 



oarlv. Tin- whey exudes from the curd much more 

 freely when it is yet young and tender and the only ob- 

 ject in cutting the curd at all is to get out the whey. 

 When cutting is begun, let it be continued as expeditious- 

 ly as possible until it is finished. Do not stop and let 

 the curd stand and toughen. It cuts more easily, with 

 less friction and less waste by loosening line particles of 

 curd, when it is tender and parts easily before the knife. 

 The more it toughens,- the harder it cuts, the more fric- 

 tion there is, the more the curd is torn and bruised, and 

 the more the waste. If we could cut early and cut in- 

 stantaneously, it would be all the better. 



CUT FINE. 



Cut the curd very fine. Seldom, if ever, is a curd cut 

 too fine.. As the object is to get rid of the whe}^, the 

 finer it is cut, the more easily we achieve our object. It 

 is not as far from the center of a small piece of curd for 

 the whey to run out as it is from the center of a large 

 piece. By cutting fine, we expose more surface for the 

 whey to run out of, and we have smaller pieces to heat 

 up. Curd is a bad conductor of heat. If the pieces are 

 large, it takes a long time for the heat to slowly pene- 

 trate them when w r e want to increase it. The small 

 pieces, therefore, absorb the heat more evenly, and this 

 gives an evener action of the rennet. 



"COOKING." 



After the cutting is done, if the whey is separating 

 rapidly, the heat may be started at once. If the action 



