FoodNet

Foods and home making

1928

Page 133

Presented as published in 1928. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
cheese of pronounced flavor. Cheese should be used in mod- eration, and less of strong cheese is required for flavoring than of mild cheese. American cheese is sometimes cream-colored and sometimes of deep yellow color, the intensity of color being due to the amount of coloring material added. Either whole or skimmed milk is used in making this cheese. Cheese made from skimmed milk contains less fat than that made from whole milk. When buying American cheese, the grocer should be able to tell you whether the cheese is made from skimmed or whole milk, since the label on a whole cheese indicates the kind of milk used. Cottage cheese is ready to eat as soon as it is made. After hard cheese and some varieties of soft cheese are made, they must be kept for some time so as to develop a pleasant flavor. Cheeses which are allowed to stand for some time before use are called ripened cheeses. How can ripened cheese be prepared ? One can buy at the grocery store a box of rennet tablets. These tablets contain the rennet enzyme, very similar to the rennin, a minute quantity of which is found in the human stomach.1 Let us experiment with rennet tablets : Experiment 18: To show how rennet ajfccts milk. (a) Into a test tube put a small quantity of milk. Heat the milk a very little. Care must be taken that the milk does not boil. Take \ of a rennet tablet. On a small piece of paper crush the tablet, pressing on it with the end of a spatula. Add the crushed tablet to the warm milk. Shake the tube to dissolve the tablet. In what state — solid or liquid — are the contents of the test tube ? ( h ) Set the tube aside. After a few minutes examine the contents of the tube. In what condition are the contents? (c) What substance must have brought about the change ? In the making of most kinds of cheese, rennet is added to milk. The rennet acts on the principal protein of milk, clotting it. The principal protein of milk is casein. 1 When milk is mixed with the juices of the stomach, it is clotted by the rennin contained in the digestive juices. The Main JLuncheon Dish 255 In commercial cheese making, after the milk has been clotted by means of rennet, the clotted substance or curd is cut into pieces and heated slightly. After more cutting, salt is added. The moisture or whey is then pressed from the curd. After the curd is separated from the whey, the cheese is tough and rubbery. It is not like the hard cheese we find at market. What then is done to the tough rubbery cheese to change it to the kind we find at market? The new or green cheese , as it is called, is allowed to stand for several weeks or longer. During this time, bacteria act upon the cheese and change it in both texture and flavor. The cheese is said to ripen when it is acted upon by bacteria. We see from this that there are some very useful kinds of bacteria. Bacteria aid in butter making, vinegar making, and the making of other foods. Not all bacteria are disease- producing. What is the composition of cheese? Study Figure 86 to learn the composition of cheese. A good way to remember the composition of cheese is to think of it as being approximately one third water, one third fat, and a little less than one third proteins. (Some cheeses contain more protein than the cheese shown in Figure 86.)