The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Book of Cheese, by Charles Thom and Walter Warner Fisk

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Title: The Book of Cheese

Author: Charles Thom and Walter Warner Fisk

Release Date: July 25, 2012 [eBook #40318]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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THE BOOK OF CHEESE

Fig. 1.—A cheese laboratory in the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University.

THE BOOK OF CHEESE

BY

CHARLES THOM
INVESTIGATOR IN CHEESE, FORMERLY AT CONNECTICUT
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE

AND

WALTER W. FISK
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF DAIRY INDUSTRY (CHEESE-MAKING),
NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE
AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1918
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1918,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1918.


Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

Certain products we associate with the manufactures of the household, so familiar and of such long standing that we do not think of them as requiring investigation or any special support of science. The older ones of us look back on cheese as an ancient home product; yet the old-fashioned hard strong kind has given place to many named varieties, some of them bearing little resemblance to the product of the kitchen and the buttery. We have analyzed the processes; discovered microorganisms that hinder or help; perfected devices and machines; devised tests of many kinds; studied the chemistry; developed markets for standardized commodities. Here is one of the old established farm industries that within a generation has passed from the housewife and the home-made hand press to highly perfected factory processes employing skilled service and handling milk by the many tons from whole communities of cows. This is an example of the great changes in agricultural practice. Cheese-making is now a piece of applied science; many students in the colleges are studying the subject; no one would think of undertaking it in the old way: for these reasons this book is written.

This book is intended as a guide in the interpretation of the processes of making and handling a series of important varieties of cheese. The kinds here considered are those made commercially in America, or so widely met in the trade that some knowledge of them is necessary. The relation of cheese to milk and to its production and composition has been presented in so far as required for this purpose. The principles and practices underlying all cheese-making have been brought together into a chapter on curd-making. A chapter on classification then brings together into synoptical form our knowledge of groups of varieties. These groups are then discussed separately. The problems of factory building, factory organization, buying and testing milk, and the proper marketing of cheese, are briefly discussed.

Such a discussion should be useful to the student, to the beginner in cheese-making, as a reference book on many varieties in the hands of makers who specialize in single varieties, and to the housekeeper or teacher of domestic science. The material has