l88 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF CHEESE-MAKING 



questions naturally arise: How much does milk-fat 

 contribute to cheese yield? How much does milk- 

 casein contribute to cheese yield? This at once 

 brings us to a consideration of the losses of these 

 constituents in the process of cheese-making. 



THE LOSSES OF MILK CONSTITUENTS IN 

 CHEESE-MAKING 



In transferring fat and casein from milk into 

 cheese through the operations of cheese-making, 

 certain amounts of these constituents are unavoid- 

 ably lost in the escaping whey and do not, conse- 

 quently, contribute to the yield of cheese. It is 

 obvious, therefore, that the cheese yield from a 

 given amount of milk is dependent, to some extent, 

 upon the degree of completeness with which the 

 fat and casein of milk are worked into cheese; that 

 is, upon the degree of success experienced in re- 

 ducing these losses to a minimum. It is very im- 

 portant, then, that in studying the relation of milk 

 constituents to yield of cheese, we learn something 

 of the extent to which such losses are found in actual 

 experience, the conditions responsible for these losses, 

 and the means by which they can be made as small 

 as possible. 



The losses of milk-fat in cheese-making. Less 

 than 20 years ago cheese-makers almost universally 

 believed that all fat in milk above 3.5 or 4.0 per 

 cent must go into whey and not into cheese. Breed- 

 ers of cows giving milk low in fat content openly 

 declared, and without contradiction, that only cows 

 of this type could be suitable for profitable cheese- 

 making, because it was impossible to transfer the 

 extra milk-fat into cheese when milk contained over 



