Cheese

a dairy product prepared from curd or coagulated milk. Cheese is less concentrated than butter. It can be kept wholesome for a greater length of time and it saves a larger percentage of the strength of the milk. Homemade cheese is still an important article of produce. When milk is brought to the right temperature, about 84deg., liquid rennet is added in sufficient quantities to produce coagulation. Under proper conditions milk separates in from twenty to thirty minutes, into a white curd and a watery whey. The latter is drained off, and, though it contains less food than buttermilk, it is richer than water, and is sent to the swill barrel. The curd is then removed to a chopping bowl and cut into fine pieces, to permit the escape of whey that may be inclosed in airspaces. This operation is performed with a sharp knife of two or more parallel blades like that used in chopping hash. The fine curd is then salted to taste, placed in a cloth, and deposited in a cheesehoop or strong wooden cylinder surrounded with iron hoops, having much the appearance of a half-bushel measure, but without top or bottom. The hoop with its contents is placed on a flat surface in a cheese press. A circular board, fitting like a piston, is placed in the upper end of the hoop, and pressure is applied for a day or two until what little whey remains has been forced out, and the curd has been pressed into a firm cheese. The cheese is then removed from the hoop and covered with three pieces of cotton cloth, one piece running like a band around the circumference, with a circular piece for each end and all neatly sewed together. It is then anointed with butter and placed on a shelf to cure. Curing cheeses are turned every few days and reanointed. The cloth and ointment are designed not only to keep the cheese in shape and to protect it from becoming soiled, but to exclude the eggs of flies and other insects. A sort of bacterial fermentation takes place in the cheese, when it is said to be ripe and ready for market. Some prefer a cheese three months old; others want it to ripen for two or three years.

About the middle of the last century, cheese factories sprang up in America. It has been found not only that they save housewives labor, but that factory cheese can be produced more economically and with greater uniformity of quality. According to the latest statistics nearly nineteen-twentieths of the cheese made in the United States and Canada is produced by factories. A number of interesting items may be stated. About 4,000 cheese factories receive milk from about 1,200,000 cows, and produce 281,972,324 pounds of cheese annually. New York has 1,314 cheese factories; Wisconsin, 1,286; Ohio, 320; Pennsylvania, 140; Michigan, 136; Illinois, 123; Iowa, 89; Vermont, 71; and Minnesota, 53. About 17,000,000 pounds of homemade cheese are produced, bringing up the total annual product to very nearly 300,000,000 pounds. It is worth at wholesale, that is to say, to the producer, from 11 to 17 cents per pound. In addition to domestic cheese, America imports about 32,000,000 pounds including 6,000,000 pounds of the celebrated Swiss cheese. We export 10,000,000 pounds. Roquefort cheese is made from the milk of sheep. Limburger cheese from Germany and Brie cheese from France are characterized by a strong odor. The milk of goats makes a very rich cheese.

It is not possible to say how much cheese is made in the world. The chief cheese exporting countries and the number of pounds exported by each were in 1908:

Total . . . . . 497,209,093

The cheese buying countries with the number of pounds bought by each in the same year were:

Total . . . . . 504,333,482

See Butter; Cattle; Adulteration