DAIRY. 



559 



Ba^ry. 



Quantity 

 of cheese 

 made in 

 Berkley 

 vale. 



Species 

 made in 

 Britain. 



Chcdder 

 cheese.- 



Fanciful 

 tlieesest 



of 20 cows he calculates at L. 136, 10s. allowing 4 

 cwt. from each cow. He is of opinion that the pro- 

 fits of a well managed dairy may arise, in a consider-* 

 able degree, from the feeding of hogs ; but when the^e 

 are not kept, the whey, he says, is valued and sold 

 at L.2 annually for each cow. 



The actual quantity of cheese made in any particu- 

 lar district is not easily ascertained with accuracy. 

 Marshall estimates the produce of the Vale of Berkley 

 at about 1 100 tons annually ; and he says that, in 1788, 

 at Barton fair, (the great yearly market for cheese, held 

 on the 28th of September in Barton-street, Gloucester,) 

 there were 40 waggon loads of cheese. The prices, 

 however, he remarks, were almost 25 per cent, lower 

 than they had been known to be for many years be- 

 fore, cheese being then a drug. The worst two meal 

 cheese sold at a guinea) and the best one meal, at 30s. 

 He mentions one factor, or copartnership of factors, 

 who were said to send seven or eight hundred tons 

 every year to the London market. 



The Gloucestershire one meal cheese is principally 

 bought by cheese factors, who live in and near the dis- 

 trict, and sent to the London market; and the two 

 meal cheese is consumed chiefly in the manufacturing 

 districts of this and other counties. It sells about ten 

 shillings a hundred weight cheaper than the other. 

 Some of it goes to the London market, and is there 

 probably sold under the name of Warwickshire cheese ; 

 an appellation often given to cheese which is in fact 

 the produce of several counties. The cheese is bought 

 by the factors from six weeks old and upwards. 



Many species of cheese are produced in this island; 

 but our markets are filled chiefly by two sorts ; the 

 one of a dry loose texture, and of a rough austere fla- 

 vour ; the other of a texture close and wax-like, and 

 milder to the taste. The former is sold under the name 

 of Cheshire cheese, and is, we believe, chiefly the produce 

 of that county and of Lancashire ; the latter under the 

 name of Gloucestershire cheese, provided its quality en- 

 title it to that distinction ; if not, it generally takes 

 the name of Warwickshire cheese. Indeed the county 

 ©f Gloucester could not produce one fourth part of the 

 cheese usually sold under this name. The number of 

 Cheshire cheeses has greatly decreased within the last 

 ten 3'ears. 



The products of Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, 

 Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Warwick- 

 shire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Dur- 

 liam, and Yorkshire, are very similar : all of them as 

 different from the produce of Cheshire as if they were 

 manufactured from a different material. 



It is this milder species which is a principal article 

 of food of various classes of working people. Glouces- 

 tershire has long had a decided superiority in the ma- 

 nufacture of it; but North Wiltshire is now a competi- 

 tor, and bids fair to take the lead. 



The vale of Chedder, in Somersetshire, is thought 

 by many to produce a species of cheese superior in 

 quality to either, and to be therefore the best in Eng- 

 land. Its quantity is very limited. It has a spongy 

 appearance, and the eyes are filled with a rich limpid 

 oil, not rancid. The hue kind is nearly as thick as 

 Cheshire, and they weigh about 30 lb. each. 



The county of Durham produces many good cheeses. 

 They are shipped at Stockton, where the cheese factors 

 collect them as well as from Yorkshire, and are distin- 

 guished by the names of new and old milk. 



Almost all those little cheeses called truckles or loaves, 

 brick-bats, hares, rabbits, pines, dolphins, &c. are made 



in Wiltshire, and their consumption increases every D.iiry. 

 day. They were once tried on the farms of Harper- > ~ -v - ' 

 land and Fairfield in Ayrshire, and succeeded very 

 well : but being more troublesome to make than the 

 common cheeses, and the fai-mer having no great anxie- 

 ty to introduce a novelty, they were given up after two 

 years successful experience. 



At Neufchatel in Switzerland, a very fine sort of Foreign. 

 cheese is made, greatly resembling a wash-hand ball I chteses. 

 arid in the district of Gruyere, a small town in the can- Swits. 

 ton of Fribourg, the famous large cheeses are made 

 which go by that name. Gouda cheese is famous in D j, 

 Holland, and was much esteemed here, while it was to 

 be procured ; but during the long interruption of our 

 intercourse with that country was very seldom to be seen. 

 We may now, however, hope to obtain it. 



In France, many districts are noted for the excellency Frenc?:. 

 of their cheese. " Roqueforte cheese," say the authors 

 of the Encyclopedic, " is doubtless the best in Europe. 

 That of Brie, Sassenage, of Marolles, yields in no re- 

 spect to the best foreign cheese : and that of the moun- 

 tains of Lorraine, of Franche Compte, and the neigh- 

 bouring countries, imitates very perfectly the manufac- 

 ture of Gruyere. Auvergne cheese is as good as the 

 best Dutch." 



We have seen and tasted a French cheese which is 

 made with fenugreek, and has exactly the smell of a 

 pig-stye. We know not in what part of the kingdom 

 it is manufactured. " Cheese," says Mr Marshall, " of 

 the first quality, or which comes as near perfection a3 

 the nature of it admits, or as art can probably approach, 

 is of a close even contexture ; of a firm but unctuous 

 consistency : of a mild flavour while young, acquiring 

 by age an agreeable fragrance. Cheese of this descrip- 

 tion, like wine of a good vintage, improves by age in 

 mellowness and flavour." 



The principal defects of cheese are porousness, hollow- 

 ness, dryness, partial rottenness, pungency, and rancid- 

 ness. The two last of which seem, by the experiments 

 of Mr Marshall, to arise from the formation or disen- 

 gagement of an essential oil. Probably the austere 

 flavour of Cheshire cheese depends upon the same 

 cause. 



Though cheese-making has been now practised for imperfect 

 more than 4000 years, it is still only in its infancy, and state of the 

 little else than mere empiricism. Two reasons may be 3rt of 

 assigned for so extraordinary a fact. In the first place, 

 the difficulty of the art itself, arising from the variety 

 of circumstances on which the quality of cheese de- 

 pends ; and in the next place, the manipulations of the 

 process having been hitherto entrusted almost solely to 

 women. We are far from intending by this to throw 

 an imputation on the sex.- In the words of Mr Mar- 

 shall, " they have by a natural cleverness done much;" 

 but having failed, after a long, and, we should think, 

 an ample space allotted them for trial, to bring the art 

 to that perfection of which it is certainly susceptible, 

 they should not reject such aids as are now offered them 

 by others. We express ourselves in this manner, be- 

 cause we have reason to believe that the operations of 

 the dairy-room are considered by some women as a sort, 

 of Berecynthian mysteries, on which the uninitiated 

 eyes of the other sex are not permitted to look, and that 

 it requires no little address, and some degree of interest, 

 to be admitted to the knowlege of its rites. 



On the importance of proper management in the pro- Import- 

 cess of making cheese, as well as in the making of but- aneeof ma- 

 ter and every other object connected with the dairy, no "WW""-- 

 writer expresses himself more strongly than the inteJlT- 



cheese 

 making. 



