Visitors to England are coming home with a new idea. Over there, we are told, they have slot machines where you can get a glass of fresh milk instead of a soda pop. There is no need to add that this is a good idea. For every sensible person knows the food value of milk and dairy products. And cheese, of course, is one of the dairy products made from milk.

The first cheese probably was made by accident. For cheese is made from sour milk and milk tends to go sour with no help from us. Oar remote ancestors toted around the milk of cows, goats, sheep, camels and other animals in skin bags. Naturally, it quickly became sour and curdled into lumpy clots and liquid whey.

The clotted curl contains most of the valuable foods in the milk. When drained and dried, these lumpy solids ripen into cheese. The first cheese makers had no idea how their cheeses would turn out. But gradually they learned different methods to make hard or soft cheeses with a variety of tasty flavors.

Milk is changed into cheese by bacteria. Even in fresh milk, these busy little bodies teem in countless numbers and varieties. The different types dine on different substances in the milk. Some thrive in high, others in low temperatures. A4 they feed and multiply, the bacteria make the chemical changes which turn milk into cheese.

One recipe provides the right conditions for the bacteria that produce Swiss cheese, while different conditions produce Cheddar cheese. But just to make sure, the cheese maker may add a culture of the bacteria he wants. T o make soft cottage cheese, skimmed milk fig soured with lactic acid bacteria.

The mixture is heated to shrink the lumpy curds and they are lifted from the liquid whey and drained.

To make hard cheeses, whole milk is soured with junket powder, the mixture is heated, more for Swiss cheese, less for American cheese in the lumpy curd is removed and drained/boxes lined with cheese cloth. The boxes are stored and each recipe calls for a certain time and a certain temperature to ripen into the finished cheese.

The bacteria which make a certain type of cheese are selected from their relatives during the first steps of the process. They finish their work during the storage period. The cheese maker may coat the cheese with wax or salt to encourage the right flavor or consistency. If he wants blue cheese, he will add crumbs of moldy bread to his recipe.