CHEESE. 
ancients. But as this cheese is, in every case, 
hard, brittle, acrid, and ill-flavoured, means are 
employed, in all modern cheese-making, for arti- 
ficially effecting coagulation, and in consequence 
obtaining sweet curd and agreeably flavoured 
cheese. Coagulation, with various degrees of 
rapidity, under various conditions of tempera- 
ture, and with various results upon the quality 
of the curd, can be effected by means of alcohol, 
sugar, acids, supersalts, and the juices of several 
vegetables; but with no known substance can it 
be effected with at once superior economy, great- 
er convenience, and more agreeable results, than 
with the gastric juice or the prepared stomach 
of calves, hares, poultry, and some other animals. 
A curd ftom acidulous coagulation is always 
more or less sour; one from alcoholic coagula- 
tion has a disagreeably vinous gout; and one 
from coagulation by means of vegetable juices 
has generally a perceptible flavour of the plants 
whence the juices are obtained; while a curd 
from coagulation by rennet, or the juice obtained 
from the stomach of animals, is quite sweet, and 
has been found by far the best adapted to the 
manufacture of all delicately flavoured cheese. 
Some writers—even in spite of the undoubted 
coagulating power of alcohol and some other 
non-acidulous substances—think that acid, in 
some form or other, is always the coagulating 
agent, and assert that vegetable acids effect a 
fuller separation of serum, or produce a greater 
bulk of curd, than other acids; and they can at 
least point to the curious facts that a few drops 
of pure ammonia, put into curdled milk, dissolve 
the curd, and that soda or potash, though acting 
with less power than ammonia, so thoroughly 
decompose curd as to transmute it into a black 
fatty substance resembling oil. Rennet is pre- 
pared very variously, in different districts or by 
different persons; and Mr. Aiton, alluding to one 
grand difference between the prevailing English 
and the prevailing Scotch methods of preparing 
it, says, “So far from throwing aside the curdled 
milk found in the stomach of the calves when 
killed, or washing away the chyle, both are in 
Scotland carefully preserved, and are found to 
tend much to strengthen and enrich the rennet. 
The curdled milk and chyle in the stomach of 
the calf form more powerful rennet than can be 
drawn from the bag alone when these substances 
are removed. It is the chyle formed from the 
gastric juice, mixed with the food in the stomach 
of the animal, that forms the coagulating power ; 
and it is only from that chyle, so formed in the 
stomach, that the bag comes to be impregnated 
with coagulable matter, more than any other of 
the intestines of the animal.” But the only differ- 
ential property between the Scotch and the Eng- 
lish rennet which at present requires to be no- 
ticed, is the important one, that while English 
rennet usually does not form the curd in less time 
than from one hour to three hours, Scotch ren- 
net commonly forms it in from five to ten min- 
utes. See the article Reynur. A table-spoonful 
of the best kind of Scotch rennet is sufficient to 
coagulate thirty gallons of milk; but the proper 
quantity of any particular specimen of rennet, 
whether Scotch or English, must necessarily de- 
pend on its relative strength; and, as a general 
rule, it ought, as nearly as possible, to be simply 
enough to effect perfect coagulation,—for when- 
ever used in excess, as to either strength or | 
quantity, it has a tendency to make the cheese 
swell, and possibly occasions a sort of smothered 
fermentation. 
A brief notice of the most approved method of 
making Dunlop cheese, or the best cheese of the | 
Scottish dairies, with a slight occasional refer- 
ence to some disagreeing points in the English 
methods, will afford a good view of the proper 
manufacture of all firm whole-milk cheeses, or of 
all the best of the hard varieties which are 
known in the English market; and this may be 
followed by such separate details as will explain 
the successful imitation in one district of the 
best produce of another district, as well as the 
manufacture of varieties essentially different 
from the firm whole-milk kinds. 
When the milk of the cows of a farm is suffi- 
cient to make two cheeses in the day, the pro- | 
duce of each milking, immediately on being ob- 
tained, is passed through a sieve, collected in a 
tub, and subjected to coagulation. But as it is 
fully and readily coagulable only when near blood 
heat, and as it suffers considerable cooling before 
the rennet can be mixed with it, a small quan- 
tity of hot water, especially when the weather is 
cold, may be advantageously added, to raise it to 
the proper temperature. When two milkings 
upon a farm are required to make a cheese, the 
milk of the evening is kept in coolers in the milk- 
house throughout the night; it is mixed with 
the milk of the morning, to form one coagula- 
tion; and as much of it is artificially heated as 
is requisite to raise the whole to about blood 
heat. In some of the English dairies, the cream 
is skimmed off and heated in order to produce 
the proper temperature; but this method sepa- | 
rates part of the butyraceous matter from the 
caseum, and occasions it afterwards to pass off 
in an oily form with the whey. The coagulated | 
milk is cut and very softly turned up, so as to 
allow the greater portion of the whey to sepa- 
rate; and when the curd is brought to the con- 
sistency of butter, it is placed in a drainer, cut 
into pieces of about two inches square, and sub- 
jected to a pressure of 40 or 50 pounds, with a 
board and weight, in order to squeeze out the 
remaining whey. Several times during the pro- 
gress of the consolidation by pressure, at inter- 
vals of about a quarter of an hour, the curd is 
turned over, cut into pieces as before, and sub- 
jected anew to pressure. After the whey has 
quite or nearly ceased to flow by this method, the 
curd is cut into very small pieces with a pecu- 
liarly formed and suitably shaped knife, and is 
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