CHAPTER XIII.
CHEESE AND SALADS.
There is a great deal of difference in cheese. Much depends on the preparation and seasoning, much on its being new or old, much on its taste and smell. That is the best cheese which is neither too old nor too new, which is called fat, and is salted enough, and which is of middling consistence, has been made of good milk, and is of good taste and smell. Cheese is nourishing enough, and helps digestion if you take but a little of it, according to the Latin line—
The flavour and goodness of cheese depends in a considerable degree on the nature of the pasture on which the cows are fed; yet the mode in which the different stages of the lubrication of the curd is managed, is also to be taken into consideration. Hence the superiority of the cheeses of particular districts over others, without any apparent difference in the pasture. Soft and rich cheeses are the best for the epicure’s dinner, and are not intended to be kept long. Hard and dry cheeses will not be relished by men of taste, or offered by hosts who care for the comfort and health of their guests. Of the rich cheeses almost all are cream cheeses; and those soft cheeses called Bath and Yorkshire cheeses, sold as soon as made: but these if kept too long become soft and putrid.
Stilton and Gruyère cheeses are intermediate between the soft and hard. The Gruyère and Parmesan cheeses differ only in the nature of the milk, and in the degree of heat given to the curd in different parts of the process. Gruyère cheese is entirely made from new milk, and Parmesan from skimmed milk. In the first nothing is added to give flavour; in the latter, saffron gives both colour and flavour.
The best English cheeses are the Stilton, Cheshire, double Gloucester, and Cheddar; and Stilton and Cheshire are greatly prized in Paris. For the last thirty years or more it has appeared to me that finer Stilton and Cheshire cheeses are to be had in the restaurants of Paris than in London. The Stilton and Cheshire cheeses at Chevets, Corcellets, and other magazins de comestibles in Paris, are larger than those generally seen in London, and I dare say a better price is paid for them by the French than by the English dealers, for gourmands in Paris will give larger prices for table luxuries than people ejusdem farinæ in London. It may be also that our English cheeses, like our English and Irish porter, is improved by the voyage, though if this were so, there is no reason why one should not eat better cheese in Dublin than in London, which one never does. My idea is that the super-excellence of the Stilton in Paris arises from the fact that it is improved or doctored (to use a trade phrase) by a perfect connoisseur in the art of improving comestibles. Cellarmen in France, when a cheese has become very dry, wash it several times in soft water, and then lay it in a cloth moistened with wine or vinegar till it becomes soft and mellow, which it will inevitably become if it be a rich cheese.
Stilton cheese is made by adding the cream of the preceding evening’s milk to the morning’s milking. To eat a Stilton cheese in perfection, you must not only have one made of rich milk, but manage it well after it is so made. Epicures prefer a Stilton cheese with a green mould. To accelerate the growth of this mould, pieces of mouldy or over-ripe cheese are inserted into holes made for the purpose by a scoop or instrument called a taster. Wine or ale is then poured in. But the best Stiltons do not require this, for they are in perfection when the inside is soft and rich, like butter, without any appearance of mouldiness. Cheeses are frequently coloured to make them look rich; the substance most commonly used for this purpose is arnotto, or the juice of the orange, carrot, and marygold flowers.
The best cheeses in France are those of Neufchâtel in Normandy, of Brie, which is much eaten in Paris, and above all, the fromage de Roquefort en Rouergue, now called Aveyron. To my taste this is the best of all dry cheeses; it has some analogy with Stilton, but is much finer. Roquefort cheese is manufactured in the village whose name it bears. Some portion of the excellence of this cheese is due to the cellars in which the straining or refining of the cheese takes place, and some portion to the peculiar manner in which the animals are milked; a process which is explained by M. Giron de Bazareinques. Roquefort cheese is made of a mixture of sheep and goat’s milk; the first communicates consistence and quality, the latter whiteness and a peculiar flavour. Roquefort cheese may be had in perfection at Corcellets’ Palais Royal, and at Morel’s in Piccadilly.
Gruyère cheese is made in the canton of Friburg, in Switzerland, and in the provinces of Franche-Comté, Bresse, and Bugey. There is a cheese made in the Mont d’Or, in Auvergne, which has a high flavour.
At large dinners in London, cheese is oftenest eaten in the form of ramequins, or grated Parmesan, and other preparations; but at small dinners the Stilton, the Roquefort, the Chester, the double Gloucester, or the Somersetshire cheese is invariably produced.
For nearly a thousand years the art of mixing herbs and cheese together has been known in England and France. In France this operation is called persiller, because a good deal of parsley is mixed with the cheese, as here we mix a good deal of sage.
Cheese is always produced at the end of a repast. In any other fashion the Italian proverb makes light of it:—
According to La Bruyère Champier, who, when attached to the household of Francis I. in a medical capacity in 1560, wrote his treatise “De Re Cibariâ,” cheese was the principal production, and the principal aliment of the Auvergnats.
In the earliest times in France, several of the provinces made good cheeses. Pliny states that those of Nimes were much sought for in his time at Rome, as well as those of Mont Losere and the neighbourhood: but these cheeses would not keep, and were eaten fresh. Martial makes mention of the cheese of Toulouse.
Italian cheeses were not introduced into France till the time of Charles VIII. When this monarch on his expedition to Naples passed through Placentia, or Placenza, as it is more commonly called, the citizens presented him with several cheeses. But he was so astonished at the size of them (“aussi grand,” says Monstrelet, “quasi comme la largeur de meules à moulin”) that out of curiosity he sent one to the queen and to the Duke of Bourbon, who were then sojourning in Bourbonnais. It was found excellent, and henceforth came into general use. De Serres, who wrote in 1600, gave the first rank among foreign cheeses to Parmesan, and the second to Turkey cheeses, which arrived in France in bladders. Gontier, in his treatise “De Sanitate tuendâ,” written in 1688, mentions among excellent cheeses that of Gruyère.
Ninety or a hundred years ago, the taste as to cheese changed in Paris, and not long antecedent to the French Revolution of 1789, cheese was thought fit food only for Germans, English, or Italians.
The popular proverb then was—
But, nevertheless, any one who examines cookery books of the time of Louis XV. and Louis XVI., will find that cheese was used in an infinity of ragouts, and that toasted cheese was placed in a liquid state on toast, with cinnamon, sugar, and aromatic spices. This was evidently an improvement on the old Welsh-rabbit, or rare-bit, which was so seldom well done, even at the Wrekin in Russell Court, Covent Garden, a house frequented by Edmund Kean in my younger days. Dr. King, in his “Art of Cookery,” thus speaks of toasted cheese:—
Of caseous substances, Nonius says:—“Magna est differentia inter recentem et vetustum caseum. Recens enim et mollis, duratis et veteribus salubritatis caussa preferendus. Teste enim Dioscoride, magis alit, stomacho utilis, corpus auget, et facillime digeritur. Minus vero nutrit si sale aspersus fuerit et stomacho inutilis. Vetustos caseos Galenus damnat.”[21]
I have not said anything of the Schabzeiger cheese of Switzerland, or the Strachino of Milan, as there are few English people who relish anything so rank. Roquefort is a much finer cheese than either of them, but the consumption of Roquefort in England is singularly small.