; ers. 
@82 
is only of late years,” remarks Mr. Aiton, “ that 
due attention began to be paid in Scotland to 
cleanliness. Till of late, the operations of the 
dairy were carried on in the sooty and dirty 
hovels which were then inhabited by the ten- 
ants; and the housewife, while she was sinking 
her arms to the elbows in the milk or curd, was 
alternately cooking for the family, and ”—but 
the rest of the sentence is too disgusting to be 
quoted. “But a separate dairy-house is now 
common in the generality of farms; and the 
person who sets the curd, &c., does nothing else 
till the cheese is put under pressure.” Milk for 
skimmed-milk cheese should be put into three- 
inch or four-inch coolers, and allowed to stand 
between 24 and 48 hours; it should afterwards, 
without any delay, be freed from its cream, and 
manufactured into cheese ; and it should be 
| heated to about the temperature of the blood, 
and passed through a sieve into the curd-vat, 
there to be coagulated. The subsequent opera- 
tions are the same as for whole-milk cheese, but 
give less trouble, and require less nicety of care. 
Dutch cheeses, under the names of Gouda, 
Friezland, EHidam, and other designations, are 
extensively imported into Britain; and are of 
| very various quality, both whole-milk and skim- 
med-milk, some hard, poor, and exceedingly cheap, 
and others good, piquant, and expensive. The 
Gouda has the highest reputation, and seems to 
be peculiarly prepared. A method of imitating 
_ and even excelling Gouda cheese was published 
in a French Agricultural Journal in 1830, and 
deserves the consideration of British dairy-farm- 
The rennet is prepared by digesting, during 
three weeks, six gastric pieces, cut small, in three 
| kilogrammes of water, five kilogrammes of com- 
mon salt, two ounces of saltpetre, and half a 
bottle of vinegar of wine. The milk for any one 
_ cheese is all of one milking; and it is put into a 
plain, unpainted, wooden trough, and coagulated 
either at its own natural heat, or with the aid of 
some heat imparted to the trough, or, in the 
case of very rich pasturing, by the addition of a 
very little warm water. When the rennet is 
added, the milk is very gently stirred; when the 
curd begins to form, the whey is gradually poured 
off; and when the great body of the whey is dis- 
charged, the curd is carefully and thoroughly 
kneaded into one homogeneous mass, and wrap- 
ped in a thin linen cloth of a fine but strong tex- 
ture, and put into a frame, whose sides are pierc- 
ed with small holes to permit the free and con- 
stant exclusion of the expressed whey. When 
the cheese is placed under the press, it receives 
pressure at first but lightly, and afterwards by 
slowly increasing degrees; it is allowed to remain 
during a vastly shorter period than in the English 
methods,—shorter even than in the common 
Dutch methods, and not so long in hot weather 
as in cold ; and when removed from the press, it 
is floated during five or six days in a pickle strong 
enough to float an egg, and has its upper surface, 
CHEESE. 
during the whole of that period, covered with a 
somewhat thick layer of salt. 
The Swiss cheeses, like those of Holland, are 
various in quality, some hard and coriaceous, and 
others soft and butyraceous,—some made chiefly 
or altogether of whole-milk, some of skimmed- 
milk, and some of curious combinations of milk, 
potatoes, and meal. The Gruyeres or Jura cheese 
has obtained a factitious fame among certain Bri- 
tish gourmands, and yet is really a hard, coria- 
ceous, bluish, half-insipid mass of skimmed-milk 
curd, requiring a coat of butter to make it palat- 
able, and usually washed down by the mountaineer 
peasantry with a draught of fresh or of fermented 
whey. It seems to be really prepared- in the 
manner in which the Parmesan cheese is profess- 
edly prepared,—by joint-stock management, and 
wholly of skimmed-milk ; but it possesses none 
of the surreptitious fattiness and pungency of | 
the Parmesan, and ought to be considered, less as 
cheese, than as hard, exsiccated, sodden curd.— 
The green cheese called Schabzieger, and made 
in the canton of Glarus, is a curious and nasty 
preparation, and, similarly to the Gruyeres cheese, | 
though quite different from it in nature, has ac- | 
quired an unaccountable and absurd celebrity. 
The curd for it is freed from the whey by pressure 
in perforated boxes; it is kept in masses till it 
begins to putrefy ; it is then worked into a paste, 
and has its putrefaction arrested, with a large 
proportion of the common, aromatic, trefoil, an- 
nual weed, Melilotus officinalis, in a dried and 
pulverized condition; and it is finally pressed 
into moulds shaped like common flower-pots, and | 
left there to consolidate and harden. 
Cream-cheeses are luxuries, of delicate charac- 
ter, and requiring nice management; and some | 
are strictly extemporaneous preparations, while 
none can be long kept. The cream-cheeses of 
Neufchatel consist simply of cream thickened by 
heat and pressed in a small mould; and they ra- 
pidly become first sour and then mellow, and are 
usually imported from France as luxuries, and 
eaten in their mellowed condition.—The cream 
for the best cream-cheeses of Britain is dried in 
small vessels of about an inch and a half in depth, 
with perforated bottoms, such as retain the cream 
and allow milk to escape; it is so covered with 
rushes or the culms of maize, as to be capable of 
being turned without being directly touched ; it 
receives no other compression than with the 
hands, between cloths; and it is kept in a tem- 
perature, as nearly as possible uniform, and nei- 
ther cold nor very hot, till it evaporate and be- 
come mellow.—An extemporaneous cream-cheese 
may be made as follows: —“Warm a pint of 
cream; add one spoonful of rennet; let it stand 
during an hour; put it into a sieve, first laying a 
thick cloth into it; let it stand during twenty- 
four hours; and then put it into a cream-vat, and 
cover it with a wet napkin anda board. If the 
process be commenced so early in the morning as 
about five o’clock, two spoonfuls of rennet may 
