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 been brought together from
the experience of the writers, supplemented by free use of the
literature in several languages. Standard references to this literature
are added in the text.
No introduction to the subject of cheese should fail to mention the work
of J. H. Monrad, who has recently passed away. Mr. Monrad never
collected his material into a single publication, but his contributions
to cheese-making information, scattered widely in trade literature over
a period of thirty years, form an encyclopedia of the subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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