Milk, its Nature and Composition; a Handbook on the Chemistry and Bacteriology of Milk, Butter, and Cheese

Abstract

THE design of this little work is to give a short, popular statement of the more important facts concerning the chemistry and bacteriology of milk; and Dr. Aikman has succeeded admirably. A great deal of most valuable information is conveyed in a simple and eminently readable form, and it is a volume which is not only suitable for students in our recently started dairy-schools, but might well find a place in the library of any country-house. The general public is only very slowly awakening to the dangers which surround the consumption of dairy produce, and it requires the pressure of enlightened public opinion to produce the requisite reforms in the hygienic management of dairies. Dr. Aikman's volume, together with Dr. Freudenreich's “Bacteria in their relation to the Dairy,” recently reviewed in these columns, should help a great deal in bringing about such reforms, which are not only of hygienic but of commercial importance to this country. In the section on the pasteurisation of milk, Dr. Aikman has overlooked an important fact, upon which the subsequent keeping power of such milk so largely depends, i.e. the immediate chilling of the milk after pasteurisation to a temperature below the point most favourable for germination. We think, in view of the recent valuable experiments, made in America and elsewhere, on the production of pasteurised milk on a commercial scale, and the importance of our adoption of a practice which has already gained considerable ground on the continent, Dr. Aikman might with advantage have entered more fully into this branch of the subject. Doubtless in a second edition Dr. Aikman will also expand somewhat the part devoted to, cheese, and include some of the important and interesting results obtained by Bondzynski on the chemical composition of some varieties of cheese, published in the Landw. Jahrbuch der Schweiz last year. The illustrations accompanying the text are carefully chosen and well executed.