The Lady's Country Companion; Or, How to Enjoy a Country Life RationallyLoudon, Mrs. (Jane)
General
The Lady's Country Companion; Or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally
Loudon, Mrs. (Jane)
Cooking; Country life; Home economics
The _Dairy_ should have thick walls, and a brick or stone floor, so
contrived that it may be washed with abundance of water every day, and
yet have all the water run off by means of a waste-pipe or drain. There
should be a kind of shelf of stone or slate round it, about four feet
from the ground, and a table of similar materials in the centre, for
the convenience of holding the vessels containing the milk and cream;
and the window, if there is but one, should look towards the north, and
be filled in with wire-cloth, so as to admit the air and yet exclude
the flies and other insects. Besides this wirework, the window should
also have either a sash frame with ground glass to open inside, or
outside shutters, to exclude the sun in very hot weather, and the
cold in winter. A thermometer should be kept in every dairy, and the
heat should never be allowed to rise above 55°, or to fall below 50°.
There should always be a scullery attached to the dairy containing a
fireplace and boiler, as the vessels in which milk is kept require to
be frequently washed with scalding-hot water to keep the milk sweet,
and to prevent the butter and cream from acquiring an unpleasant taste.
Though I do not imagine your knowledge of a dairy to be very great, I
suppose you are aware that the milk is drawn from the cow into a can or
wooden pail, and brought into the dairy, where it is strained, and then
put into shallow vessels or milk-pans, in which it is left for several
hours in order that the cream may rise. Cows are generally milked
twice a day; the morning's milk being skimmed in the afternoon, when
the afternoon's milk is put into pans, or set up as the dairy-maids
call it, and the afternoon's milk being skimmed in the morning. The
cream, after what is wanted for the table has been taken out, is put
into a large wide-mouthed jar or stein, and saved for butter. Cheese is
generally made of new milk, which is put at once into the cheese-tub
without setting it up in pans. The cheese-tub and cheese-press, the
churn and all the apparatus for making butter, generally stand in the
dairy scullery, where the operations of cheese and butter making are
carried on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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