228 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF DAIRYING. 



Salt is added gradually, and in small portions, to the less moist, 

 fresh, hard cheeses of finer quality. This is done because large hard 

 cheeses, in which the osmotic processes go on more slowly than in 

 soft cheeses, do not harden equally throughout their mass, but 

 become harder on their surface than they are in the interior, if too 

 much salt be added at once to them. The hard cheeses require a 

 dry room, in which they must be allowed to remain until they have 

 become sufficiently dry to permit of their being removed to the 

 ripening-room or to the cheese-cellar. 



Three different methods of treatment may be employed, as a rule, 

 in practice, in salting cheese: (1) salting in a tub, (2) steeping in a 

 brine solution, and (3) strewing the cheese or rubbing the dry salt 

 into it. 



Salting in a tub or steeping in brine is only resorted to in cases 

 of hard cheeses. All kinds of soft cheeses are treated outwardly 

 with dry salt, and the same is the case with the better and more 

 valuable kinds of hard cheeses. 



For salting cheese, only good, dry, finely-grained salt, of pure 

 smell and flavour, should be used. If it be desired to have the salt 

 reduced to a very fine condition, it might be put through a salt-mill 

 before use. 



With regard to the amount of salt required in the different kinds 

 of salting, no definite regulations can be laid down, owing to a want 

 of reliable observations. The least quantity of salt is used where 

 the salting is carried out in a tub; somewhat more when steeping in 

 salt brine is resorted to. With regard to the third method of salt- 

 ing, in the case of salting moderately heavy Emmenthaler cheeses, 

 according to the author's observations, the amount of salt used should 

 be about 6 per cent of the weight of the fresh cheese as removed from 

 the mould, and in the case of very large and very slowly ripening 

 cheeses of the same sort, more is necessary. In ripened cheeses the 

 percentage of salt may vary from 1 to 4 per cent, being on an aver- 

 age about 2 per cent. 



Salting cheese in the tub or vat is effected by kneading into the curd, 

 with the hands, from 1 to 5 per cent of its weight of salt, before putting 

 into the mould. The salt is dissolved very quickly in the whey adhering 

 to the different small particles of curd, and removes water to a large 

 extent from the curd, so that in moulding and pressing a comparatively 

 large quantity of liquid runs off, and when it comes to be stored, the curd 

 has already become so dry that it can only throw off very little moisture 



