Cheese-making note was Re: [Sca-cooks] Torta Sambuccea

[margali]

Dear heart, EVERYTHING is a chemical ;-) Some are made by god and
some are made by Dow ... and pretty much anything God makes, Dow
can duplicate in the lab. Yes rennet is produced in the stomachs
of calves, by plants such as Lady's Bedstraw - and a totally
synthetic version that was just never popular and isn't in
production any more.

Lemon/vinegar/wine works by the acids present 'cooking' the
protein in milk and causing it to clump. To me it leaves a very
sour and truely distasteful flavor. Rennet does a slightly
different process when it curdles the milk proteins, it is an
agglutinator - it modifies how the proteins act by forcing them
to 'stick' to each other in their little chains instead of
'cooking' them and shortening the chains. [yes I know that in the
cheddaring process and in mozzarella you cook the curds, but that
is a heat transfer issue to make the curds react in specific
ways.] Think of acid cheese as the seviche of the milk world. As
a seviche of fish tastes different than a cooked with lemon added
fish [ry it sometime] so does acid vs rennet cheese.

The fact that if you try to make sour cream the old fashioned way
by setting cream out overnight at about 85 degrees fahr. doesn't
work is explained quite fully in books - the pasteurization
process has killed off the good flora, letting feral nasty flora
colonize and 'spoiling' the milk - which is why you buy a
specific bacteria culture if you want to make sour cream, and
have to have a 'yoghurt starter'. Good flora taste good, nasty
flora tastes horrible. Same princepal as beer and wine making,
good yeast beasties, good brew. Bad yeast beasties, dog piss ;-)


I know, way too much information ;-)
margali
[well, I gotta do something to take up time when I don't work
;-)]
~~~~~
the quote starts here:
Rennet is an naturally occuring enzyme -- not a chemical.

Raoghnailt

... if i use a chemical
> such as rennet [I make my cheese with raw milk]