“In the kitchen a plentiful breakfast stood ready,--hot milk, bacon spiced with paprika, snow-white mountain honey, long-necked bottles of spirits distilled from various fruits, cheeses rolled up in the fragrant bark of the fir-tree,--all of which was new to Blanka and partaken of by her with the keenest relish, to the great satisfaction of her host. What was left on the table by his guests he packed up and made them carry away with them, assuring them it would not come amiss.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
pressed and dried for use. Curd, called also casein and caseous matter, or the basis of cheese, exists in the milk, and not in the cream, and requires only to be separated by coagulation. The coagulation, however, supposes some alteration of the curd. By means of the substance employed to coagulate it, it is rendered insoluble in water. When the curd is freed from the whey, kneaded and pressed to expel it entirely, it becomes cheese. This assumes a degree of transparency, and possesses many of the properties of coagulated albumen. If it be well dried, it does not change by exposure to the air; but if it contain moisture, it soon putrefies. It therefore requires some salt to preserve it, and this acts likewise as a kind of seasoning. All our cheese is coloured more or less, except that made from skim milk.
Sources: The passage is from Mór Jókai, Manasseh: A Romance of Transylvania, tr. Bicknell, Percy Favor, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, beehive stamp.