Talk:Horace the Cheese

Victorian Cheesemaking

Just been watching a TV show called the Victorian Farm - very enlightening! Showing all the processes that Tiffany Aching might reasonably have used to make bespoke cheese. all the things the books don't tell you, like having to dissect, clean and scrape a fresh calf's stomach to get the rennet to kick-start the process of controlled rot. Then heating a vat of milk to 85 degrees F, adding the rennet, waiting for the separation of curds and whey, putting up with the overwhelming smell of baby-sick. The Victorians used a "curdling knife" to aid separation, a fearsome looking thing with fourteen blades, but prior to this, a cheese-maker would have used her hands. The whey is drained off as pig-feed and the curds then transferred to round moulds and patted down into shape.

The sheer amount of hands-on touching... no wonder a witch would have put something of herself into the finished product! truly, blessed are the cheesemakers...AgProv (talk) 12:43, 17 July 2013 (GMT)