The TTwA' of Acidity in Cheese-making. 
283 
as it dries will become so brittle that it can scarcely be handled 
without some of it crumbling away. As time passes it will get 
drier and harder, until eventually it will break up into a number 
of hard, tough fi-agraents, without either the characteristic odour 
or flavour of cheese, and which appreciative mites will ulti- 
mately resolve into appropriate dust. If we compare with this 
result that obtained from the slightly alkalised milk, we shall 
observe, on the other hand, that, as has been before indicated, 
the contraction of the curd is so feeble that it is impossible to 
free it from the whey, even in a very imperfect degree, without 
losing a considerable portion of it in the whey, and that when 
we have got it into the mould it forms a sodden mass 
which no amount of pressure will consolidate into the consistence 
of a proper cheese, except at the expense of a great loss of 
" white whey." If the cheese so formed be kept at a high 
temjierature (over 65° F.), it will gradually exhibit evidences of 
putrefactive decomposition. Gaseous products will form in it, 
which will distend it in one direction or another, and will 
ultimately cause it to burst. Either in the whole or in parts it 
will soften until it may become perfectly fluid. The small 
amount of the genuine flavour and odour of cheese which it may 
acquire will soon be replaced by the offensive products of 
putridity ; and the cheese will end by becoming the congenial 
breeding-ground of maggots. 
Such, in brief, is the contrast which the cheese made under 
the two opposite conditions of excess and defect of acidity ex- 
hibits. The two intermediate samples — viz., that made from 
ordinary fresh milk and that from milk the acidity of which 
has been artificially increased at the time of renneting — display, 
as might be expected, gradations of character which correspond 
to the amount of acidity present in them at the curding stage. 
In the first of them we shall have a product which approaches 
the character of a sound, well-flavoured cheese in proportion as 
it has been made in other respects properly. But however 
projDerly in such respects the second of these two cheeses may 
have been made, the vice implanted in it by the excess of acidity 
present at the outset will make itself more or less apparent 
aftemards throughout its history. It may not be as dry or as 
crumbly or as tasteless as the cheese which was made from the 
spontaneously soured milk was, but it will approach these charac- 
teristics in proportion as its acidity rises beyond the amount 
required to give just that degree of tenacity and elasticity to 
the curd which will enable it to expel all the whey but what is 
wanted to promote those fermentative changes on which the 
ripening of the cheese depends. 
V 2 
