Practically all cheese is now factory-made. A few kinds are similar to cottage-cheese. But most cheese is made by adding rennet to soured, or "ripened" milk. The firm curd thus formed is cut up, warmed, drained, salted, and pressed into separate cheeses; and these cheeses are then kept several weeks or months to dry and ripen them, and to develop their flavor. Different conditions during curing produce different flavors.

Food Value Of Cheese

Good cheese is about one-third fat and one-fourth protein. (Chart 2.) It is partly digested by the rennet and the curing process, and is very completely digestible in the body. For healthy, especially for active people, it is one of the best of foods. We might well use it more in place of meat, as Europeans do. But if used in addition to meat or other nitrogenous food, only a little should be taken, as a relish. Cheese contains a very little sugar, and mineral matter. What foodstuff is lacking?

What May We Eat With Cheese To Supply This?

Cheese Fondue is hearty enough to form the main dish of a meal. See also recipe for Baked Macaroni with Cheese on p. 122.

Cheesed Crackers

Crackers (zephyrettes), 6. Grated cheese, about 6 r. t. Cayenne pepper, f. g.

Butter zephyrettes lightly, spread with cheese and cay-enne well mixed, and heat on a pan in a hot oven till the cheese melts.

Cheese Fondue

Butter a baking-dish. Cook bread crumbs and milk together, stirring until hot and smooth; add butter, cheese, salt, and pepper, cook one minute longer, and remove from the fire. Beat yolks and whites separately, the whites till stiff and dry. Mix the yolks thoroughly into the cheese mixture, and fold in the whites. Bake in baking-dish in hot oven fifteen or twenty minutes; when firm to the touch, the fondue is done. Serve at once in the same dish.

Baked in ramekin dishes, this mixture forms Cheese Ramekins.

Brief Reference List

For further development of topics treated in this section see: -

Sherman : Food products. Ch. 3 and 4.

Olsen : Pure foods. Ch. 4, 5, and 7.

Rosenau : The milk question.

Rosenau : Pasteurization. (In U. S. public health and marine hospital service - Hygiene laboratory bulletin 56.)

Wing : Milk and its products.

Elliott : Household bacteriology. Pp. 55-60.

Buchanan : Household bacteriology. Ch. 26 and 30, Lactic acid fermentation ; p. 297, Ripening of cheese; ch. 40, Milk and its contamination.

Ward : Grocer's encyclopedia. (Articles on milk, condensed milk, cheese, butter.)

Health Education League : Booklet 2. Milk.

U. S. Dept. of Agriculture : Farmers' Bulletins: 413. Care of milk and its use in the home; 363. Use of milk as food; 490. Bacteria in milk; 487. Cheese and its economical uses in the diet. Bureau of Animal Industry. Circulars: 166. Digestibility of cheese; 126,161, 184 (on pasteurization); 197. Directions for home pasteurization; 171. Fermented milks.