Page:Hand-book on cheese making.djvu/51

 "whey." It is to unite these globules and separate them from the whey that is the primary function of cheese making. It so happens that rennet, the active agent in this process, besides exerting an automatic, chemical action on milk, imparts to the solids new and vigorous properties that give cheese a medicinal value to the human stomach, namely, an inceptor of digestion. It is imperative that a cheese maker understands enough about milk to instantly detect the slightest change from its sweet, pure, normal condition. Milk as a fluid is highly sensitive to unclean odors, and when it absorbs them in a greater or less degree, the maker should, by an olfactory test, discover the taint. Milk that has been tainted by a retention of the animal heat, not having been cooled when freshly drawn, will give off a rank, burned smell, nauseous in the extreme. If the taint was absorbed from odors, the peculiar scent of the particular stench will be indelibly impressed on the fluid. Mature or sour milk is more to be desired for cheese manufacture than milk poisoned by taint. In fact, a slight maturity of milk is necessary—or, at least, desirable—to produce a fine cheese, the same as mature cream is required to develop good butter, only in the former the "ripeness" must be scarcely perceptible, while in the latter it must be well advanced. All tainted milk, and all milk that is "old" and nearly sour, should be unconditionally rejected at the cheese factory for manufacture. Do not be afraid of financially losing by such a rule. It is none too stringent, and in the end it will give your goods a trade reputation that will be secure and impregnable. The idea that really good cheese can be made out of poor milk is disproved by chemistry and common sense.

One of the most important factors in cheese making is the saline mineral known as salt. A cheese can be manufactured