The Chemistry of Cookery

the cheese, and adding it to about its own bulk of water in which the bicarbonate of potash is dissolved. The proportion of bicarbonate, which I theoretically estimate as demanded for supplying the deficiency of potash, is at the rate of about a quarter of an ounce to the pound of cheese; and I find that it will bear this quantity without the flavour of the potash being detected. The proportion of potash in cows’ milk is more than double the quantity thus supplied, but I assume that the cheese loses about half of its original supply, and base this assumption on the fact that ordinary cheese contains an average of about 4 per cent. of saline matter, while the proportion of saline matter to the casein and fat of the milk amounts to 5 per cent. This is a rough practical estimate, kept rather below the actual quantity demanded; therefore more than the quarter ounce may be used with impunity. I have doubled it in some of my experiments, and thus have just detected the bitter flavour of the salt. As regards the solubility of the cheese, I should add that there are great differences in different samples. Generally speaking, the newer and milder the cheese the more soluble. Some that I have tried leave a stubbornly insoluble residuum, which is detestably tough. I found the same cheese to be unusually indigestible when eaten with bread in the ordinary raw state, and have reason to believe that it is what I have called ‘bosch cheese,’ to be described presently. The successful solution, in either alkalised milk or alkalised water, cools into a custard-like mass, the thickness or viscosity varying, of course, with the quantity of solvent. It may be kept for use a short time (from two or three days to two or three weeks, according to the weather), after which it becomes putrescent. As now well known to all concerned, a great deal of ‘butterine,’ or ‘oleomargarine,’ or ‘margarine,’ or ‘bosch,’ is made by extracting from the waste fat of oxen and sheep some of its harder constituents,