Cheesemaking In The Early 19th Century

I'm here at Genesee country village and museum it's a wonderful living history site here in western New York this episode today is going to be great we're making cheese thanks for joining us today on 18th century cooking so I'm here today with Deanna burka Meyer and she knows cheese tell me a little bit about what people are white people are making cheese especially in a homesteading situation or this kind of situation here in the early 19th century why is cheese important well cheese is a way to preserve your milk it's how you take care of that 3 gallons of milk approximately that you're getting between April and November okay so you can't drink all of that you have to preserve it somehow another purpose for cheese is it stretches out your meat supply as well so that's an important thing to do to make it last the whole year round and it gives you a milk type product to have in the winter time when your cow isn't giving milk anymore yes absolutely so what kind of what kind of cheese are we going to be working on today we are making a farmhouse cheese it's basically an English type cheese okay it's a hard cheese so it's time to get started what have we got here we have five gallons of fresh milk what do we do with this first we need to put it on the stove and we need to heat it up to about blood warm and how do you tell when you're when you're at the right temperature well we use our finger of course okay but modern days it's best always for a new cheese maker to use a thermometer okay so so we're shooting for any countries right yes we are okay so we're using you're using raw milk here most people are not going to have access to raw milk how can we use pasteurized milk to make cheese that's very easy all you need to do is for every five gallons of your pasteurized milk you're going to add one quart of cultured buttermilk you have to add the good bacteria back in so what's happened with pasteurized milk is they've tried to kill off all the bacteria that's going on inside of the milk and so we have to add some of those back in yes I actually need them to make the cheese happen the bacteria is a good thing it creates flavor and it makes the cheese come together but there's one more thing occasional only people have what they've got in their stories ultra pasteurized milk tell me about that ultra pasteurized is not good to use that's very bad and the ultra heat treated also two types of pasteurization is not good it really will not make a cheese so it's just when worse won't work okay don't waste your money on it so rennet is a major component of what's happening with cheese obviously it's pretty hard to make cheese without rent right it's hard to make an aged cheese without rennet okay what have we got here well what we have here is one of the ways that they would have had in the nineteenth century this is the stomach lining of a calf okay an unwind calf and so this is where you would get your rennet it would cut a piece off about the size of a 50-cent piece okay tie a string around it and soak it in some water overnight it's got the enzymes in it that are needed to coagulate the milk but today what are we using today we're using a commercial rennet it is actually made in the same way it's just far far stronger than they were in the nineteenth century now I'm going to add a quarter of a cup of lukewarm water to the little mortar here and then I'm going to measure in a teaspoon and a half of our commercial rennet now we're going to add it to the milk in the pan that's come up to temperature so now john i'm going to have you stir slowly and gently i want you to stir up from the bottom and then in a figure-eight you're going to stir for about a minute after you've stirred the whole minute then i want you to hold the spoon steady in the middle and it just stops the milk from moving so now that we've got it stirred in and blended together we're just going to let it rest so we're going to cover it up with a cheese ladder and with a cloth flies can bring beautification to your cheese so calf stomach rennet is the isn't the only kind of rennet that's available in the 18th and 19th century right no no there is a vegetable rennet that you can use you can use a bed straw ladies bed straw nice flowering plant and you collect that you can soak that also in water just like we soak the stomach and you pour that in and that's how your rennet works so how long do we need to leave this before we do the next stage it's gonna stand about an hour and a half it's gonna take before it's all the way set so we've got this close to the fire do we do we need them to heat this up or does it just stay like this it needs to stay there and stay warm you don't want it drafty you don't want it to cool down too much well John I'm going to have you lift lift off the ladder in the cloth and I'm going to test it for a clean break so I'm going to stick the end of my finger in I'm going to lift and see how that curd makes a nice very line so we're going to cut the curd we use a nice long knife and you just put it in and we're going to cut it in about 1-inch cubes all the way down okay to the bottom when you cut the curds you're actually creating more surface area that more way can come out so at this point what we want to do is separate the liquid part of the milk from the solid part of the milk okay always making sure you get all the way to the bottom you can see the way is already starting to quickly come out in all that surface area that we've created so now we're just going to cover it back up with our ladder and the cloth keep the flies out again and we're going to let it rest another hour or hour and a half okay this is looking real good John you can see that the curd has sunk way down look how much whey we've got on the top of the pan and the curd underneath so now at this point we're just going to put it back on the stove and begin to heat it so you originally broke these up an hour and a half ago with when you cut it up but now you're even continuing to to break these longer strips up so yes we are breaking them up as we stir we're breaking each of the bigger pieces smaller and smaller as we go and we'll continue to do that and as we break it it throws off even more way this is the stage when it's going to really start to throw off a lot of the liquid very fast we're going to slowly heat it up to 102 at that point it will have the proper texture so unfortunately you cannot hurry the stage along if you do heat it too quickly you will actually form a skin on the curves and it will not release the way properly so your cheese will be wet and it will not aged properly okay so then all we're going to do is keep dipping so it took you something like almost an hour of just sitting there breaking up these turds slowly this whole time that is a lot of work now we're going to pick it up buy all four corners okay give it a twist and squeeze out as much as you can oh boy that's a lot so now we're just gonna break it up and we're gonna put some salt in about two to three tablespoons that's looking pretty good today you felt the texture of it you said okay we released enough away as it is now it's time for the what is this this is uh gnosis we're going to put it in the press so we have a lobe Hooten okay pre buttered I did butter we buttered ours not all of them necessarily need to be buttered but ours doesn't release real well without okay so it's just a help helpful release it so now all we're gonna do is we're going to a converging crumbling issued handfuls okay and crumbling it very evenly into into the hoop okay so then I just fold these over as smoothly as we can there's going to be some bunching but when we take it out and repress it then that will smooth that all out now you've got this is it called a follow is this a call to follow are okay that's correct that just fits and you can see some of the way starting all the ways already huh no this goes straight into our press that's made specifically for this job it is a fit this block under yeah okay then oh I suppose you want to try to keep this nice and even right yep and you see all that yeah ideally we would like that to be a little bit clearer okay but because we're losing cheese they're losing a little bit of the cream some other richness the cheese so now we're going to let it sit and actually after a little while it will kind of settle and then we'll come back and retighten so that it's right now it's under pressure but it'll slowly lose that pressure and become then we'll type it up a little bit more exactly look yep and then we'll just leave it until tomorrow so this cheese is ready to come out how long has it been in this press it's been in the press a couple days it was taken out and flipped and repressed okay and so now it's ready to come out or just go cry out the follower should all right now let's take off the bandage pull it off carefully so you don't tear the cheese itself there we go you are going to age this one but is it okay to eat it right away raw milk Jesus should be should be kept and aged a minimum of 60 days before their eat to make sure that the good bacteria have overpowered any bad bacteria that might have gotten in it and but if you're using a pasteurized milk and buttermilk it's probably okay if you were going to eat it earlier than it it's probably okay to eat as a green cheese okay now I'm going to take the cheese and I'm going to put it in the cabinet with a little bit of salt that I've spread around on the shelf and I'm going to turn the bottom over to the top and tharok is typically these cheeses are aged at least for 60 days right yes at what 60 days longer than that absolutely you can the longer you aged them the sharper they get sharper and higher I like cheese I like sharp cheese I don't know about like it to dry but um how does the aging process go with this uh well just everyday once you put your cheese on the Shelf every day you're going to turn the cheese's and put them on a dry salted spot on the shelf so we've got a finished cheese here how long do you think this one's been agent Oh probably probably at least two three months you don't you don't date them no they're not taking it okay should we find out what they taste like yes okay so let's find out all right would you like to try a piece yes I would love to try a piece so this has definitely got a very actually if this isn't too dry there's some some some dampness air it'll soften right up in your mouth mm-hmm this is a wonderful it's um it's a little salty than than what you might compare to most cheese's today depending on the cheese so maybe the level of a parmesan saltiness but it's a wonderful sharp flavor to it excellent cheese how would they have typically used a cheese like this now this kind of a cheese is a grating cheese so you're gonna you can make macaroni and cheese okay nice cheese soup you can there's all kinds of recipes for using receipts for kissing cheese many times it would have graded this what got necessarily a table cheese that you would have eaten as a course by itself or anything like that not no probably not not not when it gets to this harder stage okay so I want to thank you Deanna for showing us this entire process and explaining everything there was to know about this 19th century farmers G so thank you so much for that and I really want to encourage anyone if you're in this western New York area make sure to come to this site this Genesee country village a museum it's an amazing living history site so make sure to come and visit it and I want to thank you for coming along with us today as we discover as we learn about 19th century cheese's and and all these wonderful flavors in the aromas of the 18th and early 19th century I want to give a special thanks to all the folks at Genesee country village and museum for all their help make sure to check out their website you

Channel: Townsends

Views: 1,329,004

Rating: 4.9411187 out of 5

Keywords: cheese, cheesemaking, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, jon townsend, 18th century, 19th century, food, cooking, milk, raw milk, curds

Id: 4B6qYQbvJWY

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 14 2016