Rozzano.  Parmesan cheese.  It is supposed this was formerly made at Parma, and took its name thence; but none is made there now.  It is made through all the country extending from Milan, for one hundred and fifty miles.  The most is made about Lodi.  The making of butter being connected with that of making cheese, both must be described together.  There are, in the stables I saw, eighty-five cows, fed on hay and grass, not on grain.  They are milked twice in twenty-four hours, ten cows yielding at the two milkings a brenta of milk, which is twenty-four of our gallons.  The night’s milk is scummed in the morning at daybreak, when the cows are milked again, and the new milk mixed with the old.  In three hours, the whole mass is scummed a second time, the milk remaining in a kettle for cheese, and the cream being put into a cylindrical churn, shaped like a grind-stone, eighteen inches radius, and fourteen inches thick.  In this churn, there are three staves pointing inwardly, endwise, to break the current of the milk.  Through its centre passes an iron axis, with a handle at each end.  It is turned, about an hour and an half, by two men, till the butter is produced.  Then they pour off the butter-milk, and put in some water which they agitate backwards and forwards about a minute, and pour it off.  They take out the butter, press it with their hands into loaves, and stamp it.  It has no other washing.  Sixteen American gallons of milk yield fifteen pounds of butter, which sell at twenty-four sous the pound.

The milk, which, after being scummed as before, had been put into a copper kettle, receives its due quantity of rennet, and is gently warmed, if the season requires it.  In about four hours, it becomes a slip.  Then the whey begins to separate.  A little, of it is taken out.  The curd is then thoroughly broken by a machine like a chocolate-mill.  A quarter of an ounce of saffron is put to seven brentas of milk, to give color to the cheese.  The kettle is then moved over the hearth, and heated by a quick fire till the curd is hard enough, being broken into small lumps by continued stirring.  It is moved off the fire, most of the whey taken out, the curd compressed into a globe by the hand, a linen cloth slipped under it, and it is drawn out in that.  A loose hoop is then laid on a bench, and the curd, as wrapped in the linen, is put into the hoop:  it is a little pressed by the hand, the hoop drawn tight, and made fast.  A board, two inches thick, is laid on it, and a stone on that, of about twenty pounds weight.  In an hour, the whey is run off, and the cheese finished.  They sprinkle a little salt on it every other day in summer, and every day in winter, for six weeks.  Seven brentas of milk make a cheese of fifty pounds, which requires six months to ripen, and is then dried to forty-five pounds.  It sells on the spot for eighty-eight livres, the one hundred pounds.  There are now one hundred and fifty cheeses in this dairy.  They are nineteen inches diameter, and six inches thick.  They make a cheese a day, in summer, and two in three days, or one in two days, in winter.