2. Mix in the proportion of five quarts of water to half a pound of concentrated ley, and one pound of prime annotto. First dissolve the ley in the water, by heating and stirring, and then add the annotto, and dissolve it. Boil gently for half an hour. Care, as with the other preparation, should be taken not to burn it. Settle and rack off. Then your liquid is ready for use.
The second recipe is the one most used, and is easiest to prepare, as it avoids the labor, perplexity and risk of making the ley, which may not always be of the desired strength, as the ashes may not be the same. But if ashes are used, hot water is best to leech through them. A quart of salt to ten gallons of preparation will improve its keeping qualities.
An indispensable requisite in making cheese is good rennet. Nothing else will answer the purpose. Different substitutes have from time to time been tried, but all have met with indifferent success, or absolutely failed. Acids will produce coagulation, but they spoil the quality of the cheese. It was once supposed that the gastric juice of the calve's stomach was acid, and produced coagulation by souring. But it has been demonstrated that good curd can be produced from sweet new milk, by the use of rennet, without the development of acid in either the curd or the whey. How or why the principle obtained by soaking the calve's stomach produces coagulation has not yet been discovered. What the principle _is_, is not even known. It appears to be contained in the gastric juice secreted by the inner membranes of the stomach, and a small quantity of rennet, stirred into a vat of milk, seems to coagulate it in the same manner that milk taken into the calve's stomach is coagulated. We all know the fact that by the use of rennet we can make cheese. Beyond this, we have little knowledge; so far as we are aware, scientific men are just as much in the dark as the cheese-maker.
As the stomach of the calf is bifold, we have seen the mistake frequently made of saving the wrong one. But we presume patrons are generally well informed on this point now, after so many years' experience. Where the stomach is not entirely empty, the presence of curd is a sure guide. Always save the stomach that contains the curd, and no mistake will be made. If the stomach is empty, save the one that has a smooth inside surface. The one that has a rough, honey-comb-like inside surface is worthless for cheese-making, and should, of course, be rejected.