Cheese

"THE chief constituent of cheese is casein coagulated by the action of rennet. But, prepared from casein alone, cheese would be coarse and almost tasteless, and when dry would become as hard as stone. To give tenderness and flavor to the paste-like mass, the cream is commonly retained in milk used for making cheese. The casein furnishes the main substance of the product, while the cream contributes what might be called the seasoning."

"Hence we have two principal varieties of cheese: one, prepared with milk from which the cream has been taken, contains only casein; the second, made from unskimmed milk, contains both casein and cream. The first kind, known as cottage cheese, white cheese, or, more expressively, skim-milk cheese, has little food value and is not made for its own sake, but in order to put to some use the milk that has already served to make butter. The second kind, called cream cheese, is what commonly appears on our tables in different varieties and varying appearance, according to the quality of the milk and the mode of preparation."

"To make cheese still more unctuous and to give it a finer flavor, we do not always content ourselves with using milk in its natural state; to the cream that it naturally contains we often add some more from milk skimmed expressly for the purpose. The cheeses thus enriched with fatty matter are the most delicate of all. Again, we occasionally adopt a middle course, using neither natural milk nor entirely creamless milk, but of two equal parts of milk we keep one just as it is and skim the other, mixing them together afterward."

"By adding or withdrawing, in varying quantities, this fatty constituent of the milk, we obtain as many different varieties of cheese. If also we bear in mind that sheep's milk has not exactly the same properties as goats' milk, nor goats' milk the same properties as cows' milk; if we remember, further, that the same animal's milk varies according to the nature of its feed and the care given to the herd; and if, finally, we take into account the different methods of manufacture, of one sort in one place, of another sort somewhere else, we shall understand how numerous may be and in fact are the various kinds of cheese."

"For my part," Jules interposed, "I know at least half a. dozen kinds. There is Roquefort, a pasty cheese streaked with blue and of a sharp flavor; Gruyere, riddled with large round holes and yellowish in color, and clear like quartz; Auvergne, as large as a big millstone and not very delicate in flavor; Brie, in thin, wide cakes that sweat a kind of ill-smelling cream; Mont d'Or, packed with a little straw in a round deal box; and a lot of others that I can't remember now."

"Jules has just told us the best known kinds of cheese; I will add a few words on the way they are made."

"Fresh cheeses are those that are eaten soon after being made. They are white and soft. They are made of either skimmed or unskimmed milk, and in the latter case they are incomparably better. When the rennet has brought about coagulation, the curdled milk is poured into round molds of tin or glazed earthenware, with holes in the bottom for the escape of the whey contained in the curdled mass. As soon as this has drained enough and is sufficiently firm, the cheese is done, and it is taken from the mold ready for the table without any other preparation."

"That 's the cheese I like best," Emile declared. "It 's the kind we spread on slices of bread to make those delicious sandwiches."
That is very true, but it has the fault of not keeping long. In a few days it turns sour and uneatable. All the other cheeses would do the same, all would spoil and become sour if certain measures were not taken to prevent this. These measures consist in the use of salt, which is rubbed and sprinkled on the outside of the cheese, and sometimes even mixed with the curd itself. All cheeses, then, that are to be kept a long time receive more or less salt, while fresh cheese is not salted at all."

"Of these salted cheeses some are soft, some hard."

"That of Brie, named from the district where the best is made, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, is a large and thin soft cake, made of sheep's milk. It is salted on both sides with finely powdered salt, and is left to soak for two or three days in the salted liquid that drips from it. The salting finished, the cheeses are packed in a cask with alternate layers of straw, and are left alone for several months. Then there starts a kind of fermentation, which is the beginning of putrefaction, and which develops new qualities. The curd loses its odor and insipid taste of milk-food, to acquire the heightened flavor and strong smell of cheese; its mass becomes more oily, even partially fluid, and changes under the rind to a liquid pap of creamy appearance. This work of modification is called refining. It has gone just far enough when the liquid part under the rind is of a pleasant taste. The cheeses are then taken out of the cask and are ready for eating."

"This first example shows us that cheese acquires its peculiar qualities through an incipient deterioration. Before this putrefaction sets in the cheese is simply curd, sweetish, insipid, without pronounced odor; after this process it has the odor, the taste, in fact all that is required to make it really cheese. But the putrefaction, once started artificially, does not stop where we should like it to stop. It goes on all the time, slowly indeed if we take some precautions, and the cheese, smelling more and more, and tasting stronger and stronger, ends by becoming a mass of rottenness. All cheese, therefore, when it gets too old, is sure at last to go bad; it spoils by continuing to excess the kind of deterioration that in the beginning gave it precisely the qualities desired."