A New System of Domestic Cookery

page 261

in which the cows feed. Various modes of preparing may effect a great deal; and
it will be bad or good of its kind, by being in unskilful hands or the contrary;
but much will still depend on the former circumstance. The same land rarely
makes very fine butter, and remarkably fine cheese; yet due care may give one
pretty good, where the other excels in quality.

When one is not as fine as the other, attention and change of method may amend
the inferior. There is usually, however, too much prejudice in the minds of
dairy people, to make them give up an old custom for one newly recommended. This
calls for the eye of the superior. A gentleman has been at the expense of
procuring cattle from every county noted for good cheese, and it is affirmed
that the Cheshire, double Gloucester, North Wiltshire, Chedder, and many other
sorts are so excellent, as not to discredit their names. As the cows are all on
one estate, it should seem that the mode of making must be a principal cause of
the difference in flavour; besides, there is much in the size and manner of
keeping.

Cheese made on the same ground, of new, skimmed, or mixed milk, will differ
greatly, not in richness only, but also in taste. Those who direct a dairy in a
gentleman's family, should consider in which way it can be managed to the best
advantage. Even with few cows, cheeses of value may be made from a tolerable
pasture, by taking the whole of two meals of milk, and proportioning the
thickness of the vat to the quantity, rather than having a wide and flat one, as
the former will be most mellow. The addition of a pound of fresh-made butter, of
a good quality, will cause the cheese made on poor land to be of a very
different quality from that usually produced by it.

A few cheeses thus made, when the weather is not extremely hot, and when the
cows are in full feed, will be very advantageous for the use of the parlour.
Cheese for common family use will be very well produced by

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