24 MANUFACTURE AND CURING OF CHEESE. 
carried at 40° F. required about four times as long a period for ripening. 
The latter part of this contention is probably true, as it was shown by 
the Wisconsin Station through chemical analyses made during the 
course of ripening that cheese held at 40° F. broke down in four weeks 
to about the same extent to which cheese carried at 70° F. would break 
down in one week, and according to the reports of the same station 
there was a decided difference in the rate of curing of cheese held at 
55° and at 65° F. — much more, in fact, than was claimed in the argu-. 
ments for the cool-curing rooms. 
In connection with the claim that the cheese cured in the cool-curing 
rooms had a more desirable flavor than cheese cured in the cold-curing 
rooms, there seems to be room for a decided difference of opinion. As 
has been previously mentioned, the market demand is growing rapidly 
toward a cheese of mild flavor. This will be mentioned hereafter, but 
in this connection it may be stated that the scoring of the cheese in 
the experiments conducted at Guelph was done by well-known 
Canadian buyers and exporters, and in their opinion the cheese cured 
at 40° F. was slightly superior in quality to that cured at 60° F. 
The Canadian cool-curing rooms attempt to pay expenses by the 
saving in shrinkage. In cold curing, as now generally practiced in 
this country, cheese is paraffined as it goes into storage, thus prevent- 
ing practically all shrinkage. Otherwise the shrinkage would amount 
to about 1 pound or more in 20, and at 10 cents a pound this saving in 
shrinkage would be sufficient to carry the cheese in storage for nine 
months at the prevailing rates. 
Evidently one fact that has not been taken into consideration is that 
a temperature of 55° or 60° F. will not check many undesirable fer- 
ments which may occur in the ripening cheese. It was emphasized by 
Babcock and Russell that one of the advantages in a cold-curing room 
lay in the fact that many undesirable qualities due to conditions which 
existed at the time of making could be almost entirely overcome by 
the use of very cold temperatures in curing. This would not hold true 
for the cool-curing rooms. It would be impossible, owing to these 
factory conditions, to get such an even quality of cheese in the cool 
rooms as could be secured by the use of the lower temperatures. 
COOPERATIVE WORK BY THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND STATE 
STATIONS. 
At the suggestion of the Wisconsin Experiment Station the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, through the Dairy Division of the Bureau of 
Animal Industry, in 1902 entered into a cooperative arrangement for 
conducting some commercial experiments on the cold curing of 
cheese. a The station at first contemplated that all the work should be 
a Bulletin No. 49, Bureau of Animal Industry. 
