198 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF CHEESE-MAKING 



THE RELATION OF WATER TO YIELD OF 

 CHEESE 



As we have seen, the amount of solids in cheese 

 is determined by the amount of fat and casein in 

 milk when the conditions of manufacture are nor- 

 mal. When we come to consider the amount of 

 water held in cheese, we find that it bears no rela- 

 tion whatever to the amount of water in milk, but 

 that it is dependent upon the conditions present in 

 the operations of cheese-making, such as the degree 

 of fineness or coarseness in cutting curd, temper- 

 ature used in heating curd, degree of acidity, 

 amount of salt, etc. (p. 45). The amount of water 

 in cheese can easily be made to vary 10 per cent. 

 Fresh cheese contains an average of 37 per cent of 

 water, but in actual factory work the variations may 

 be very wide, especially where cheese is manufac- 

 tured for export trade at one part of the season and 

 for home trade at another. Therefore, when we are 

 discussing yields of cheese from milk, and especially 

 in the case of comparison of different milks, it is 

 absolutely necessary to know the percentage of 

 water in the cheese. When we compare yields 

 of cheese from different milks or under different con- 

 ditions of manufacture, we should base our com- 

 parison on the yield of cheese which contains a 

 uniform percentage of moisture, if the results are 

 to have any definite relation to the milk con- 

 stituents. 



So important is it for us to appreciate the extent 

 of variation of water in cheese, as made at cheese- 

 factories, that we will present data obtained by the 

 New York experiment station in 200 experiments 



