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Bath Cream Cheese
To any quantity of milk, warm from the cow, add a third of the quantity of warm water, a pint of cream, and about two table-spoonfuls of rennet to each three gallons of milk; cover it over and let it stand. When turned, break the curd, and put it in a cheese-cloth on a sieve to drain off the whey; take it out, wash it in cold spring water, and again drain. This must be done three times; the third and last time, in order to get rid of the whey effectually, hot water should be used, and the curd should then be drained and put into the press for six or eight hours. Probable cost of the milk and cream, 2s. per gallon.
This is a working dairy recipe written for a household with its own cow, and it cannot be reproduced safely in a modern kitchen. The notes below explain the specific failures rather than offering substitutions.
- Raw milk, never heatedThe milk goes into the vat "warm from the cow" at roughly 95F and is never brought above the temperature of the hot rinse water. Nothing in the process kills Listeria monocytogenes, E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella or Campylobacter, all of which are found in raw milk and all of which concentrate in the curd rather than draining away with the whey.
- A fresh cheese with no ripening stepRegulations in the US and elsewhere permit raw-milk cheese only after a minimum ageing period (60 days in the US) precisely because acid and salt need time to work against pathogens. This cheese is pressed for six to eight hours and eaten young, which is the one category of raw-milk cheese that has no such protection.
- No salt at allSalt is the main hurdle in a fresh cheese, controlling both spoilage organisms and water activity. The recipe omits it entirely, so the finished curd is a moist, near-neutral, nutrient-rich medium held at room temperature.
- Unmeasured rennet, unmeasured acidity"About two table-spoonfuls of rennet to each three gallons" refers to a homemade or nineteenth-century commercial extract of unknown strength; modern rennet is standardised and vastly more concentrated. More importantly, there is no starter culture and no target pH, so the acid development that a safe fresh cheese depends on is left entirely to chance.
- The cold spring water washesWashing curd in untreated spring water is a second, independent contamination route. Three successive washes also strip out whatever lactic acid has formed, pushing the curd further from a protective pH.
- Vessels and quantities, for reading onlyThe gallon here is the imperial gallon, about 4.55 litres, so three gallons is nearly 14 litres of milk — a dairy batch, not a kitchen one. The "press" is not described in the recipe; a household or farm cheese press with a cloth-lined hoop is the likely tool. The "2s. per gallon" is a pre-decimal costing, and shillings remained in use until 1971, so the price alone does not date the entry.
- If you want to make this style of cheeseUse a current recipe from a dairy or cheesemaking authority, one that specifies pasteurised milk, a measured starter culture, pH targets and salting rates.
Bath cheese belongs to a small family of English soft cheeses named for the towns that sold them — Bath, York and Cambridge among them — made from rich or cream-enriched milk, lightly pressed, and sold within days rather than matured. Bath in particular had a ready market: a fashionable spa city with hotels, lodging houses and a breakfast trade, supplied by dairies in the surrounding Somerset country. In the 1870s and 1880s cheesemaking was still a household or small-farm operation as much as a factory one, and a dictionary of cookery was expected to cover the dairy alongside the kitchen. The instruction to add a third part warm water may have been intended to slow and soften the curd, though the entry itself does not say so, and the recipe still calls for pressing. The entry also gives a price per gallon of milk and cream rather than a yield, a costing line of the kind found throughout Cassell's.