Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/1452

1292 parsley, and mixing this with some uncoloured curd. With the Romans, and during the middle ages, this practice was extensively adopted. Cheddar Cheese is manufactured principally at Pennard, near Cheddar, and is one of the best and most widely known cheeses we consume. American Cheddar is considered the best of the cheeses sold as American. Brickbat Cheese has nothing remarkable except its form. It is made by turning with rennet a mixture of cream and new milk. The curd is put into a wooden vessel the shape of a brick, and is then pressed and dried in the usual way. Dunlop Cheese has a peculiarly mild and rich taste; the best is made entirely from new milk. New Cheese (as it is called in London) is made chiefly in Lincolnshire, and is either made of all cream, or, like Stilton, by adding the cream of one day's milking to the milk that comes immediately from the cow; these cheeses are extremely thin, and are compressed gently two or three times, turned for a few days, and then eaten new with radishes, salad, etc. Skimmed Milk Cheese is made in most dairy countries, and is eaten by the peasantry, but is not generally exported. There are some exceptions, such as the Parmesan Cheese, made in Parma and Piacenza, the most celebrated of all cheese, and made entirely of skimmed cow's milk. The high flavour which it possesses is supposed to be owing to the rich herbage of the meadows of the Po, where the cows are pastured. The best Parmesan is kept for 3 or 4 years, and none is carried to market until it is at least 6 months old. Dutch Cheese derives its peculiar pungent taste from the practice adopted in Holland of coagulating the milk with muriatic acid instead of rennet. Swiss Cheeses, in their several varieties, are all remarkable for their fine flavour. That from Gruyère, a bailiwick in the canton of Fribourg, is best known in England. It is flavoured by the dried herb of Melilotos officinalis in powder. Cheese from milk and potatoes is manufactured in Thuringia and Saxony. Cream Cheese, although so called, is not properly cheese, but is merely cream dried sufficiently to be cut with a knife. All cheeses are imitated in countries and places other than those from which they take their conventional names. Cheese is also made of skimmed milk mixed with animal fats or margarine, in the place of the cream that has been removed for sale. Camembert is a Brittany cheese, one of the most esteemed of cream cheeses, it being richer than most; it is a small, flat cheese of a pale yellow colour, with a dark rind. Roquefort is a very rich cheese, made in the South of France, from the milk of sheep and goats. Like Stilton, it has to be kept a considerable time before it is sufficiently ripe for eating. Shabzieger is a cheese exceedingly strong both in smell and taste, and for that reason is considered a delicacy by some and a cheese to be avoided by others. An excellent but little known English cheese is one called Wensleydale, which takes its name from the place where made, a small village in Yorkshire. This cheese has the characteristics of Stilton, and is rich in quality. Dorsetshire yields a very good cheese