in making Cheshire Cheese . 1/1 
colouring will be requisite. The leaner the cheese is, 
the more colouring it requires. The manner of using 
annotta is, to tie up in a linen rag the quantity deemed 
sufficient, and put it into half a pint of warm water over 
night. This infusion is put into the tub of milk in the 
morning with the rennet infusion ; dipping the rag into 
the milk, and rubbing it against the palm of the hand as 
long as any colour comes out. 
Setting the Cheese together . 
It is, we believe, generally admitted, that not only 
the quantity, but the quality of the curd, as to texture, 
namely, toughness or otherwise, depends in a great mea- 
sure upon the length of time the cheese is in coming ; and 
that the time, again, depends on the quantity and strength 
of the coagulum used, the state of the atmosphere, and 
the heat of the milk when put together. In this stage of 
the art, where a degree of accurate certainty seems to be 
required, there is no other guide but the hand and the 
external feelings : the thermometer of a Cheshire dairy- 
woman is constantly at her fingers’ ends : accordingly 
the heat of the milk when set, is endeavoured to be regu- 
lated by the supposed warmth of the room and the heat 
of the external air; having reference also to the quantity 
and strength of the steep, so that the milk maybe the pro- 
per length of time in sufficiently coagulating, which is ge. 
nerally thought to be about an hour and a half. The even- 
ing’s milk of suppose twenty cows having stood all the 
night in the cooler and brass pans, the cheesemaker in 
summer, about six o’clock in the morning, carefully 
skims the cream from the whole of it, observing first to 
take off all the froth and bubbles, which may amount to 
about a pint; this, not being thought proper to be put 
into the cheese, goes to the cream mug to be churned for 
butter; and the rest of the cream is put into a brass pan. 
