One great set-back to good cheese making is inexperienced and
careless labor. This is another cog in the wheel that has been
retrograding the reputation of our goods during the last few years.
A medical student cannot obtain a diploma authorizing him to take
under his charge the welfare of the sick without three years’ study
aided by ocular demonstrations of his especial science. Then, he
is expected not to have a dim idea of a patient’s condition when
diagnosing his case, but to know and understand all about it. No
cheese maker is fit for duty unless he can diagnose the condition
of a vat of milk on a quick examination. The natural odor of pure
milk has a peculiar animal smell, whose nature can be acquired by
careful olfactory tests indulged in as the student draws the fluid
from the cow’s teats. After an apprentice at the business can tell
pure, sweet, untainted milk in any spot or place, he must learn to
distinguish between that which is tainted and that which is verging
on the sour. Tainted milk is radically different from sour milk,
and infused in the product they each tend toward utterly diverse
results. To pass a correct judgment on milk quality is thus essential
No. 1 in a maker’s practical knowledge. Requirement No. 2, is to
have a thorough understanding of the constituents and influence of
all of the foreign ingredients that go into cheese. Rennet, the
most potent auxiliary of the cheese maker’s craft, should never be
handled or applied by ignorant hands. The amateur maker should gain a
physiological insight into the lactic portion of animal anatomy, and
have an intelligent comprehension of the active force of the peptic
secretion. When such knowledge is acquired he will see the importance
of never countenancing any coagulating fluid that is not immaculately
pure in extraction and free from any subsequent taint. He will also
understand its nature enough to always make a judicious application
of it to the milk designed for manufacture. Here the necessity of
step No. 1 joining hands with No. 2 is apparent, for he cannot make
a judicious application unless his olfactory sense is trained to
perceive and gauge every variation of the milk quality. Necessity No.
3, is in following the quality variation of milk into the cooking and
maturing curd. It is a well-known fact with cheese makers that no two
vats of curd will scarcely ever work exactly alike in succession. If
one is to know absolutely just what to do and what to leave undone at
certain moments of assimilation and maturity in curd, he must have
gained that knowledge not from books but from continued practical
experience. Here the necessity for previous learning arises. No
pettifogger would be expected to argue legal points before the
Supreme Court, because lack of advancement in the rudiments of his
profession would make him as unfit for such a pleader as a farmer
or merchant. Every man to his business, and no man to be trusted
in any trade capacity until he has proved himself competent. So,
if an amateur lawyer or doctor is not to be trusted, why should
responsibility be placed on the shoulders of a green hand at cheese
making? He is expected to properly prepare an important article of
human food, and, inexperienced and ignorant of the rudiments of the
trade, he stumbles along in the dark, doing, perhaps, the best that
he can, and not so much to blame for the failures that accrue as are
his employers.
Wide dispersion of training schools for both butter and cheese makers
is not far off, and I, for one, hail that day with delight.