CHAP. vi. WILTSHIRE CHEESE. 333 



air must be admitted, and the cheeses placed farther apart on the 

 shelves. After the cheese has been in the drying-room about twenty 

 days the coat will be firmly fixed, and the cheese must go to the storing- 

 room, to be placed in rows on deal shelves. Here it will only require 

 daily turning, but the shelves must be kept quite clean and free from 

 mites, and careful attention must still be paid to draughts and tempera- 

 ture. In summer it is necessary to exclude the light at mid-day. 



Stilton cheeses are sometimes not sufficiently mellowed until they are 

 two years old ; and are not accounted to be in good order unless they 

 are decayed, blue, and moist. It is said that small pieces of a mouldy 

 cheese are often inserted into them by means of a taster, and that wine 

 or ale is frequently poured over them. Large caulking-pins are also stuck 

 into them to produce the requisite mouldiness. Much of this is bad 

 policy, for the highest perfection is attained when the inside becomes 

 almost as soft as butter and there is not any blue mould save that 

 which develops during the ripening of the cheese. 



A Stilton cheese is generally ready for the table in about six months 

 from making. When ready it should have a crinkled light drab coat, 

 it should cut easily with a knife, and if bored it should leave some of 

 the rich soft cheese upon the surface of the borer. It should be well 

 veined with blue, and have a flavour and aroma not to be found in any 

 other cheese of British or foreign make. 



For the most recent information the reader is referred to Mr J. 

 Marshall Dugdale's paper on " Stilton Cheese " in the Journal of the 

 Royal Agricultural Society of England, vol. x. (3rd series), 1899. 



In making Wiltshire Cheese, the milk is used as soon as it is brought 

 from the cow ', or, if the temperature is too high, it is lowered by 

 the addition of a little skim-milk. The curd is, in the first place, 

 broken with the hand to various degrees of fineness, according to the 

 kind of cheese intended to be made. For thin cheese, it is not reduced 

 so fine as in the Gloucestershire ; for the thick kind, it is broken still 

 finer; and for loaves it is almost crushed to atoms. In the first 

 breaking of the curd, care is taken to let the whey run gradually off, 

 lest it should carry with it more or less of the butter-fat. As the 

 whey rises, it is poured off, and the curd pressed and pared or cut 

 down, three or four times, in slices of about an inch thick, in order 

 that all the -.vhey may be extracted. It is then scalded in the same 

 manner as the Gloucester cheese. In some dairies it is the practice, 

 after the whey is separated, to re-break the curd, and salt it in the 

 liquor ; but in others it is taken out of the liquor while warm, and then 

 salted in the vat. The thin sorts are disposed of, with a small handful 

 of salt, in one layer ; thick cheeses, with two handfuls, in two layers ; 

 and loaves, with the same quantity, in three or four layers, the salt 

 being spread and uniformly rubbed into the curd. In general, Wilt- 

 shire cheese is twice salted in the press, beneath which it continues, 

 according to its thickness. 



Dunlop cheesemaking, once general in the south-western counties of 

 Scotland, has been almost wholly extinguished by the Cheddar system, 

 which was introduced into Scotland by Harding' of Marksbury (see 



