|airs | 
X. A. AVILLARD, A. M., EDITOR, 
Or Limr FaUM, HkeKIMSB Cou»TV, N*w York. 
HUFFY AND LEAKY CHEESE. 
I apply to you for information with regard 
to a difficulty in my dairy, of which I am 
anxious t<> know the cause:—My cheese, after 
being tliveo or four weeks old, with a flrm,«nootb 
rind of nioa appearance nnd shape, begin to 
raise or huff in spots, and if not tapped, or a 
vent made in some manner, will break, and dis¬ 
charge a fluid with a slight salt and cheese flavor. 
II an opening is made, the fluid will collect and 
discharge through it, and the cheese, if cut in 
tills condition, seems very rich and buttery, as 
if the 11 uid had dissolved a portion, leaving the 
ricliost. 
I make my curds in the manner T have seen 
reported In the ItuitAL Nkw-Yokkeh — seaid 
100 , and let cook till acid enough to draw off; 
cool and salt. Curds very fine, suffer no loss 
from waste of cream in whey, I never put to 
press until perfectly cool. We have a screw 
press, and tighten with lovers. Cows are well 
cared for, not over-driven or heated. Grass 
wild prairie; at milking, small quantity mill 
feed; milk very rich; good water. Have had 
experience in the business on the Western Re¬ 
serve, and have been familiar with it from 
childhood. First experience in Iowa lust .year; 
also, first with acid curds, and first trouble of 
this kind. All my cheese arc not of this char¬ 
acter, although there Is no difference in their 
manufacture or apnea ranee until t wo weeks old 
or more. Item tote good, prepared in whe.V. 
Have not had lire in curing room ntilil of late. 
Would II make any difference if the tempera- 
lure is low in curing room when first taken from 
press, or for a week or more? Is it advisable to 
press longer Ilian twenty-four hours, and what 
is the heat kind of press? What is the trouble, 
and what the remedy?—E. H , Ionia, June , ls'0. 
Remakes.— There is evidently in this case 
some defect in manufacture. Curds in ■which 
Hie acid is not properly developed some¬ 
times act in Hie way described ; but as that 
point seems to have been attended to, we 
should attribute the fault to oilier causes. 
In the first place, very likely the curds are 
not sufficiently drained of whey when re¬ 
moved from ihe vat to the sink. This is an 
important matter to bo attended to, not only 
to secure a proper separation of the whey, 
hut in regulating more accurately the right 
proportion of salt to be used in the curds. 
When the curds are quite wet on the appli¬ 
cation of salt, a considerable part of it is 
likely to pass olT in Hie whey; and as the 
curds will vary in moisture from day to day, 
there is difficulty in applying salt, so that it 
will bo detained in the curds with uniformity. 
Again, the sail should not only he a pure 
article, but it should he passed under a 
roller to crush any lumps, and thus made 
fine before application to the curds. Then 
il must be evenly incorporated through ihe 
mass. If the salt lias been applied rather 
carelessly and small lumps of sail allowed to 
remain unbroken in the curds when put to 
press, these, Oil dissolving, will be likely to 
form little sues of fluid in the cheese, caus¬ 
ing the trouble complained of. 
Again, when ihe screw press is used, the 
pressure must be followed up by turning the 
screws from time to lime, oilier wise the 
cheese will bo imperfectly pressed, and the 
Whey will not all be expelled. Thu screw 
press is one of the best in use, and is the one 
generally employed at the factories; but at 
farm dairies, where the cheese maker, after 
pulling the curds to press, wishes to attend 
toother work and cannot keep proper watch 
of the pressing, a sell-regulating press is 
more convenient. There are several kinds 
of these, but Hie best of which we are ac¬ 
quainted is the Oyston press — a strong, 
durable machine which will do ils work 
without watching. It is sold at. the dairy 
furnishing stores at Utica and Syracuse, 
N. Y., at about, twenty dollars. 
In scalding or cooking the curds, we should 
advise our correspondent to raise the heat 
very gradually, and when they have shrunk 
or hardened down to the “right feel," and 
the acid has been properly developed, to well 
drain and salt the ciml as above suggested, 
and if the screw is tightened up from time 
to time while pressing, we think the trouble 
complained of w ill be obviated. 
In salting, we like the English method of 
dressing Ihe curd through a curd mill, and 
then applying the salt. When the curds are 
rightly managed and ground in a curd mill, 
the texture of the cheese is improved. 
Twenty-four hours is usually considered 
long enough to keep the cheese under pres¬ 
sure. The English keep the cheese in press 
two days, or more, and think it is improved 
on this account ; and perhaps it is; at any 
rate, no hurt will result from “ a two days’ 
pressure." 
In regard to curing cheese the best tem¬ 
perature for the curing room is about 70’. 
What we want in curing cheese is, to subject 
it to no extreme of beat or cold, but keep it 
at an uniform temperature, just high enough 
to carry on a slow process of fermentation, 
that the casein may be broken down and 
transformed into a mellow, clean-flavored 
mass. When (lie curing room is kept at too 
low a temperature, the fermentation in the 
clteese is checked and the proper transfor¬ 
mation is not effected. On the contrary, 
when tlic temperature is allowed to run up 
high, the fermentation is too rapid and 
gases are evolved, and the cheese gets out 
of flavor on account of the heat. Large 
quantities of cheese are injured in this way 
almost every year at our factories, and in 
going to market. 
When heat is excessive in the curing 
room, well made clteese often will huff or 
rise up in spots from undue fermentation. 
On introducing a wire and liberating the 
gas ihe cheese assumes again its proper 
form. Well made clteese, however, that act 
in this way on account of heat, do not leak 
whey or contain sacs of pent up fluid as 
referred to by our correspondent. In his 
cusc there is evidently an imperfect separa¬ 
tion of the whey from the curd, cither from 
some defect in manufacture or from the 
causes we have named. When curds are 
manipulated badly, improperly scalded and 
the acid not developed in due proportion, 
the whey docs not readily separate, and in¬ 
deed no amount of pressure will expel it 
from the curds; but when it goes into the 
curing room, this pent up whey becomes 
acid, ami as the mass ferments it separates 
and forces itself out, and thus we have a 
leaky cheese. But assuming that there has 
been no faulty management in the early ma¬ 
nipulation of the eimls and in the develop¬ 
ment of acidity, the whey may he retained 
in the cheese on account of improper 
drainage, baiting and pressing, as we have 
suggested. 
DAIRY IN DERBYSHIRE ENGLAND. 
We are in receipt of a letter, dated June 
18th, from a Derbyshire (England) farmer, 
in which he speaks of having recently visit¬ 
ed the cheese factory at Derby, which our 
readers will remember Was opened this sea¬ 
son as ait experiment, or the first attempt at 
the factory system in England. He speaks 
of ihe factory and its appliances as a great 
saving of labor, and that the clteese made 
was looking well. He adds that he has had 
a steamer set up in his farm dairy and lias 
made a half dozen cheeses on the American 
plan, but on account of limited room in 
buildings, &c., finds it more inconvenient 
than the old way. 
Referring to the general feeling in regard 
to this experiment of our factory system he 
says:—“Some people who are dependent, 
upon dairymaids to make their cheese are 
much pleased with the factory system ; and 
some with small dairies of five or six cows 
find it beneficial to them. But those who 
can make n good dairy of cheese, say, 1 wait 
awhile and see if they can beat us before we 
adopt their system.’ ” 
Referring to the dry weather in England 
he speaks of having a nice rain about the 
15th of June, which was much needed—that 
the hay and corn harvest will be later and 
lighter than usual il there docs not come 
more rain. In some parts, he says, the land 
is beginning to burn. Wheat is looking 
well, but spring crops of grain are suffering 
from drouth. 
-♦-*■♦- 
COLORING BUTTER-ANNOTTO. 
AS it is true that annotto is used for coloring 
butter to a considerable extent, allow me to in¬ 
quire through your columns if some of your 
readers, who understand the process, will give a 
receipt;, so that all may have the benefit of it.— 
A Daiky Woman. 
Remarks. —Annotto is used quite success¬ 
fully in coloring spring and winter butter 
when, on account of the feed which the 
cows get, the butter naturally comes pale or 
white. The coloring is applied in two ways. 
One plan is to prepare the coloring material 
by melting down a small quantity of butter 
and coloring il with annotto, and putting it 
aside in a stone crock for use. Then at 
each churning a small quantity of this pre¬ 
pared butter is taken and worked carefully 
through the mass, thus coloring it the de¬ 
sired shade. This plan is the one usually 
employed in the Holstein dairies. We do 
not approve of this method, as there is more 
or less difficulty iu working the coloring 
matter evenly through the mass without 
overworking and spoiling the grain of 
the butter. The better way is to use the 
annotto in the cream, and then during the 
process of churning il becomes perfectly in¬ 
corporated with the mass and gives an 
even shade throughout the butter and with¬ 
out trouble. 
In coloring butter in this way it is import¬ 
ant that a pure liquid annotto, free from 
sediment, he used. Nichols’ liquid annotto, 
an English preparation, being of uniform 
color and free from sediment, is excellent for 
the purpose. It can now be had at most of 
the dairy furnishing establishments. 
When basket annotto is used, a simple 
recipe for cutting tbe annotto is as follows: 
Dissolve a half pound concentrated potash 
in five quarts of water, by heating and stir¬ 
ring. Pour off the ley from the sediment 
and add one pound best annotto and dissolve 
it. Boil gently for twenty-five minutes by 
placing the mixture in a kettle surrounded 
by water, so as to prevent scorching or 
burning. Then let the mixture settle; rack 
it off, and strain through a fine cloth, and 
bottle for use. By measuring the quantity 
of cream and the proportion of annotto for 
the desired shade, a uniform color tor differ¬ 
ent churnings may be obtaiued. 
\onustu (Btonmny. 
CONDUCTED BY MAKY A. E. WAGEK. 
A COUNTRY DINNER. — COOKING. 
BY JULIA COLMAN. 
I was tired of the heat and the monotony 
of the city —a monotony broken mostly by 
the ominous popping which prophesied the 
approach of another “ Fourth,” and which 
I dreaded more than all the rest. So I ran 
away to one of my many country homes, a 
country minister’s, whose wife is a long¬ 
time friend, and lets me follow my fancy in 
work or play. The family is small, just 
three, and 1 made the fourth. The third is 
one of the rosiest, merriest, bluest-eyed two- 
year-olds that ever romped with mamma’* 
friend, or sagely dipped her “paddies” into 
every dish of cookery. They are in that 
enviable condition that enables a family to 
do their own work nicely and easily, with¬ 
out the aid of a servant. Of course I insist¬ 
ed on doing my share of the work, to keep up 
the balance, as well ns for the more selfish 
reason that it was as good a thing as I could 
wish to do for my own health. 
So when J ubtitia went into the kitchen 
1 went too, and she gave me a big apron and 
permission to do just as 1 lilted. Of course 
I liked to do just what she wished to have 
tne, and we soon had a variety of dishes un¬ 
der discussion. Blackberries were in their 
prime, and Justitia wanted to try 
A Blackberry Budding 
in some new style. “ It seems to me," said 
she, “ that we could make one hv alternat¬ 
ing them in layers with slices of wheat meal 
bread." 
“ There’s nothing like trying,” was my re¬ 
joinder, and we were soun into it. 
“ Berries at iho bottom of the nappy?” 
“ No, bread, because the berries are large 
and we can’t get more than two layers of 
each ; and it will not do to have the bread 
on the top, for it will he hard.” We steamed 
the bread tender, cut it a quarter of nu inch 
thick, and put in plenty of sugar, for the 
Lawtons were sour. 
“Now, I expect,’’ said Justitia, “that 
the berries and the sugar will melt down to¬ 
gether and fill the bread with their delicious 
juices.” 
“ Then you must trover il up, or the heat 
of the oven will dry ilup too much.” 
So a plate was pin. over it, but we soon 
saw that it would still be too dry, and we 
filled it half up with water. We baked it 
till the berries were “ melted down” (about 
forty minutes) and with sublime confidence 
in the success of our experiment, concluded 
to wait until we had duly discussed the rest 
of our dinner, before tasting it. And the 
rest of 
Otir Dinner 
consisted just of boiled mutton, which we 
dispensed with, as we did not feel meat 
hungry, and had no fears of fainting without 
it. Next we had some of the most delicious 
boiled white wheat, and some boiled Early 
Rose potatoes, nice and mealy, and done to 
a turn. These two dishes were dressed with 
a gravy made of the liquor from the mut¬ 
ton skimmed of all the fat, thickened 
with wheat meal, and seasoned with a sprig 
of chopped parsley just scalded iu, which 
goes very well with those who like parsley. 
Then there were white onions cooked gently 
nearly an hour, their juice cooked down and 
served with them, and then the dish half 
filled with rich sweet cream. 1 served them 
to the others, but for myself I never can 
quite get rid of the fear that some Lime 
within twenty-four hours after eating them, 
1 may happen to meet wilb some dear 
friend outside the perfumed circle of diners 
who will make the odious discovery that 
1 smelled of my last dinner. They were 
very templing, but I more than made good 
their loss by a saucer of tenderly cooked 
Champion of England peas, served half 
full of their own broth. 1 fancied that they 
deserved the cream more than the onions, 
though they certainly needed it less. 
And then the delicate slices of rye and 
Indian bread, the creamy butter, and last, 
though not least, the pure, finely-flavored 
and delicately cooked dried apples, with iheir 
thin unbroken quarters resting in the clear, 
amber colored juice; all these tempting 
viands, but more tlnm these, the rippling 
flow of cheery talk and the rustic iu the 
vine clad porch, made us nearly forget our 
still covered experimental pudding. 
It did not serve nicely. The bread and 
the berries fell apart and looked ragged. 
Justus said, however, that it tasted better 
than it looked, and wanted to know what 
we were to cat on it, to which the mistress 
replied that she had hoped it would be good 
enough to eat without a dressing. Justinia, 
however, promptly held up her little plate 
for “juice,” from the stowed apple; so we 
followed suit, added a little sugar, and de¬ 
clared the combination perfect. 
The next day we slewed and sweetened 
the blackberries, having them quite juicj’- 
befbre interlaying the bread, and baked it 
half an hour. This was certainly the better 
pudding, and needed no dressing. Justi¬ 
tia insisted, however, that the former was j 
good enough for “any” hurried occasion 
which might cmne into the exigences of 
housekeeping. She was bent, however, on 
having 
A Steamed Pudding 
of some kind. As I had noticed that the 
trees in the yard of an iutimaxe neighbor 
were dropping their little black cherries un¬ 
appreciated on the ground, I said 1 would 
make one if we could have some of these 
Cherries. But as the latter were of “small 
account, and nobody used them,” she did 
not like to ask for them. I replied that 
those were just the reasons why I would 
do it myself, by her leave. I would like to 
demonstrate what good things were being 
carelessly wasted. She did not object, so I 
managed the thing in my own way, and 
made my arrangement to send a cherry pud¬ 
ding also to the owners of the trees. 
Justitia declared she would get up a j 
rival pudding, and hers should be of black¬ 
berries. So she scalded the wheat meal, 
working it lightly, and rolling it about one- 
third of an inch thick. I did likewise, but 
did not pour in quite water enough at first; 
so I had to work it (in order to make it ho¬ 
mogeneous) so much that 1 feared it would 
l>e hard. Bo l cut it into biscuit, which I 
knew I should be able to use up for bread 
crumbs if nothing else. Then I tried it 
again, and with better success. I wa lied 
my cherries and rolled them in wheat meal 
and tucked them in, turn-over fashion, pin¬ 
ned it up in a cloth, steamed it half an hour, 
and sent it over to the house that was shaded 
by the cherry trees. Then we prepared for 
our own dinner, which was to come at a 
later hour. 
Justitia said she liked juicy puddings, 
and she would not put any flour inside; but 
I assured her that the berries would make so 
much juice that it would break out and run 
away, and she would have less than if she 
put in something to soak it up. Notwith¬ 
standing our dispute, the rival puddings lay 
quietly, side by side, in the same steamer, 
though Justitia came near spoiling them 
both by putting the potatoes to boil in tbe 
kettle under them. This, of course, stopped 
their steaming just when they were begin¬ 
ning to cook. Fortunately there was anoth¬ 
er kettle boiling on the stove, to which we 
transferred I he steamer until Dio potatoes 
commenced boiling. But when we served 
up the potatoes wo found them wonderfully 
discolored; the juicy blackberries bud run 
over ns I prophesied : but having prophesied 
it, I found no necessity for repeating it. I 
even declared it improved the potatoes, made 
them more showy, and Justitia amicably 
confessed that my pudding was the heifer of 
the two, and so our little rivalry ended. We 
sauced our puddings with simple sirup made 
with one part white sugar to two purls wa¬ 
ter, by measure, boiled until perfectly clear. 
Ambrosia. 
The next day we concluded to try the 
oven again, and we made a batter crust, stir¬ 
ring the wheat meal slowly into cold water, 
until it was a little too thick to settle flat. 
We liued the nappy with this, put in a layer 
of blackberries, sprinkling over them sugar 
and wheat meal, then more batter at the 
sides, ancl another layer of fruit, Ac., and 
covered the whole with a thin layer of bat¬ 
ter. We baked this forty minutes, watching 
that it should not run over. It would have 
done so in spite of us, only that the dish was 
not quite full. The sides saved it, aud we 
lifted the crust with a fork at the edges, and 
let it run hack again. 
Justitia called it “ halter pie,” hut I said 
that if she called it that before Justus, he 
would expect the old-fashioned pie crust, and 
if she called it a pudding, lie would want a 
sauce to cat with it, aud so, as it was really 
neither a pie nor a pudding, we might as well 
give it a distinctive name. I called it “ Am¬ 
brosia," which, before Sterling's clay, meant 
“food for tbe godfe;” and \\e might as well 
restore the word to something like its origi¬ 
nal use. We laughed lightly at this; a 
heavier laugh chimed in, aud behold there 
was J ustus himself, looking over our shoul¬ 
ders. We declared wo would punish him 
forgetting “ out of his sphere,” by depriving 
him or his share of the celestial food, which 
he triumphantly answered by taking the 
dish over our heads and carrying it off to 
the dining-room. We followed as fast as our 
laughter would permit, for his nimble steps 
betrayed his extreme haste to get to some 
[ place of relief. I expected every instant to 
see the dish drop; but he deposited it se¬ 
curely, if not coolly, on the table, and then 
danced a jig and a pirouette in most unmiu- 
isterial style, with arm and finger gestures 
that would have doue credit to Gough. His 
wife finally imprisoned those lingers, plunged 
them in cold water, and rolled them iu fine 
flour, while I covered up the Ambrosia, to 
steam the crust. He partook of his dinner 
quietly, and, as 1 fancied, with a shade of 
sadness; but when Justin a, with an expres¬ 
sion of inimitable pity on her infantile lips, 
tempted her “poor, precious papa” with 
1 dainty bits of Ambrosia from her silver 
j spoon, lie declared himself the partaker of 
. Elysian happiness. 
axcntific anir flsffui. 
HOW TO FILE THE RURAL. 
There is a great fault that most people 
are guilty of, to wit: tearing tip their agri¬ 
cultural journals. Why not save tllcm? 
How often you need them for reference. 
“ Why,” you say, “ after we have once read 
them through, what use have we for them ?” 
You might as well burn or destroy a book 
after you have once read its contents. I do 
not mean that you shall save them and let 
them lie carelessly about the house; but 
bind them, or, what is better, make a file 
and put them on that. How often have I 
looked over old Rural New-Yorkers, and 
they seemed as new to me as the day they 
came! In one year’s time you will forget 
all there is in this year’s edition, and they 
will again appear fresh. 
Below I give a cut of one of the best files 
there is in use, and the materials for making 
it will not exceed iJirce cents in cost, and is 
as good us tbe best. Take two strips of 
wood (walnut is the best) tbe desired length, 
dress them down to one and a-half inches 
square. Then take two small pieces of 
wire one and a-half inches in length. Fasten 
them in the strip 0 about one-fourth Hie 
distance across the strip, one at each end. 
Then make holes in the strip B to corre¬ 
spond with the pins in the strip C; also 
make a hole in the center of the strip; now 
put a screw—one with a ring in the end is 
better—through the strip B loosely, and 
screw it into the piece C, and you have it 
finished. 
Then at the end of the year you can bind 
them ill the following mannner:—Gut two 
pieces of curd board a lit tle larger Ilian the 
papers to be bound ; put in the papers and 
run a strong, well waxed twine through the 
whole in four places and fasten. Coat the 
whole back with thick glue; take a piece of 
morocco or calfskin, wide and long enough 
to cover the whole back, and to extend far 
enough over to cover the stitches, as in Fig. 
2 , and glue il on firmly, nnd you have a book 
that will last years.—u. r s. 
Remarks. —We are daily reminded by in¬ 
quiries that n great many people do not get 
half the good they may from the Rural 
New-Yorker; for if they tiled it and re- 
ferretl to its complete index they would less 
frequently duplicate and reduplicate ques¬ 
tions previously asked aud answered in its 
columns. The index at the end of every 
six months makes the volume portable and 
of greatly enhanced value for reference. 
-- 
USEFUL AND SCIENTIFIC ITEMS. 
To Clean Coal Oil Cans. 
A subscriber ut New Prospect, Miss., 
asks how to clean cans which have hud coal 
oil in them. After cleansing them as much 
as possible with wood ashes and hot water, 
use nitric acid in moderate quantities, which 
will soon remove the difficulty. 
A Simple Cistern Filler. 
The Manufacturer and Builder gives the 
following directions for a simple filter to pu¬ 
rify cistern waterPlace on the perfor¬ 
ated bottom of a box a piece of flannel, and 
on this some coarsely-powdered charcoal, 
then coarse liver sand, and cover the whole 
with sand-stone broken into small pieces.” 
Zinc Whitewash. 
The Manufacturer and Builder says: 
Mix oxide of ^inc with common size, and 
apply it with a whitewash brush to the ceil¬ 
ing. After this, apply in the same manner 
a wash of the chloride of zinc, which will 
combine with the oxide to form a smooth 
cement with a shining surface. 
The White House Whitewash. 
The whitewash of the President’s house 
at Washington has had a sort of national 
celebrity, aud is said to lie made as follows: 
Take a peck of clean lumps of well burnt 
stone lime, slake it, add half a pound of 
whiting or burnt alum pulverized, a pound 
of pulverized loaf sugar, three pints oi rice 
flour made into a very thin and well-boiled 
paste, a pound of clean glue dissolved in the 
same manner as is doue by cabinet makers 
—that is, hoi Led or simmered slowly—mix 
the whole well together, and reduce to 
proper consistence with boiling water. For 
inside work it is recommended to be put on 
cold; for outside work it should be applied 
warm. _ 
Useful nnd fcdentillc Inquiries. — “B." asks: 
“Xh there any fninonil or chemical paint, that is 
as good and durable us pure white lead ? H so, 
what Is it, and what does It cost? Also, can a 
good, substantial foundation wall be built or 
fair, ordinary stone without mortar <" 
