1048 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Paut III. 



7096. Potato cheese is a German manufacture, of which there are three sorts. One of the best is thus 

 prepared : Select mealy potatoes, and only half dress them in steam ; for by bursting their flavour and 

 efficacy are diminished. I'eel them, and then grate or beat them into a fine piiip. To three parts of this 

 mass add two parts of sweet curd, knead and mix them, and allow them to stand three days in warm, and 

 four or five days in cold, weather; form into small pieces like the Westphalia cheeses, and dry in the same 

 manner. A still better sort of potato cheese is formed of one part of potatoes and three of the curd of 

 sheep's milk. This sort is said to exceed in taste the best cheese made in 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. 



7098. Curds and whey is merely coagulated new milk stirred up, and the curd and whey eaten together, 

 with or without sugar and salt. 



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

 milk coagulated is often previously skimmed. 



7100. 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. 



7101. Corst07-phm 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 off and fresh cream added. It is, therefore, 

 simply sour curd and frcs/t 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 v/ith new milk or fresh cream, and eaten with sugar like the 

 Corstorphin cream. 



7103. Devonshire scalded or clouted cream. The milk is put into tin or earthen pans, holding about ten 

 or twelve quarts each. The evening'^ 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 fire, they remain until after the whole body of cream is supposed to have 

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

 will begin to rise that denote the approach of a boiling heat, when the pans must be removed from off 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 liave 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 of 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. {Vancouve}-'$ 

 Survey qf 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 curd) and the curd removed. 



7105. Hatted kitt. 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 by 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. 



7106. Milk syllabub is formed in a similar manner over a glass or two of wine, 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-viUk 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, generally three weeks longer, in a warm temperature, the vinous fer. 

 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 churn after the butter has been taken off. When 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 prefer it when 

 it has stood a few days and become sour. In England it is chiefly given to pigs ; but in Ireland it forms 

 a very 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 of Britain, as well 

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

 procure intoxication. 



7109. Sour milk, Alton observes, requires considerable care in the manufacturing, and the use of the 

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

 milk swells when agitated in the churn, 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, and 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 and of a v/hite colour. From two to three hours is a proper time for performing the oper- 

 ation of churning. In the manufacture of sour m.ilk, 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 

 vessels through which the milk passes, or by any sort of admixture, or even by the milk being kept in a 

 damp place, in one too hot or too cold, or even by exposure to an impure atmosj)here, 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 the milk passes must be as clean, and every part where it is kept before being churned 

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



