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tive qualities of the product are more and more appreciated. One of the most serious drawbacks to universal cheese consumption is the large profits exacted by middlemen when they dispense it to the public. If cheese could be had at the grocery for 9 or 10 cents per pound instead of 14 or 15 cents, it would be found in abundance on the poor man's table, and a heavy decrease in the export trade would result. We believe that such a time is coming, and with it will come a vast improvement in the average quality of the national make. This is not a mere speculation, but a distinctive pointer of the times, and its verification is already at hand. Thirty-five years ago the innovation of the cheddar process gave cheese quality its first great advance. That advance remains yet to be perfected in detail, and then a cheese millennium will reign.
MOISTURE IN CHEESE.
One of the most essential points in determining the quality of a cheese is the amount of moisture it contains. A proper retention of moisture by the product in a cured state depends primarily on the rennet that separated it from the watery serum of milk, and secondly on the amount of heat applied in cooking, and the quantity of salt afterwards added. To adjust all these little niceties to a minimum of fine, even quality of which moisture is an adjunct, requires experience and long familiarity with the handling and treatment of milk. Butter, moisture, and caseine should exist in about equal parts to make a mellow cheese, and, to fix the proportion rightly, enough rennet should be incorporated into the milk to expel all excess of moisture, and yet leave enough to withstand the effect of a heat judiciously gauged to cook it. Thus, rennet influences moisture on the start, and other forces afterward are introduced that either aid or retard it. When rennet diffuses itself
