QUICK GUIDE TO CHEESE. HOW TO BUY CHEESE HOW TO KEEP CHEESE HOW TO SERVE CHEESE HOW TO SELECT CHEESE.

By Robert Jay Misch '25. Drawingsby Robert Psotto. Garden City, New York:Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1973. 104 pp.$3.50.

Your passion for soda pop pacified, you may now preen yourself as a proper Oenophile (a wine lover). Expansion of vinous horizons being then appropriate, you may promptly explore the exotic worlds of Pecorino, Picodon, Port Salut, and Provolone. In brief, you may wish to pride yourself as a Turophile (a cheese lover). Let Mr. Misch guide your nose and tongue beyond the well known hards (Cheddar, Stilton, Cheshire, Gloucester, Wiltshire, and Gorgonzola) and the well known softs (Brie, Neufchatel, Camembert, and Limburg). The whole world is his cheese. He loves to talk about colors, body, texture, and the subtle nuances of flavor. His alphabetical glossary, world-wide, runs to nearly 300 items. He furnishes you with recipes for Appetizers, Luncheons, Pizzas, Soups, Eggs, Pastas, Accompaniments for the Main Course, Fondues, Sauces, and Desserts.

For incipient Turophiles, he lauds a spirit of adventure. Seek out specialty and ethnic shops. France alone has 325 varieties. If sampling is permitted, taste soft cheese by pressing it with full tongue and hard with only the tip. At a meal, offer at least four very different kinds on a large board with plenty of space, no overlap. Serve cheese not with salad and not after dessert but after the entree and before dessert. Thus it does not ignominiously compete with salad dressing and does not fight against sweetness.

DON'TS. Don't be so provincial as to make good the French saying, "Americans eat only with their eyes." That is, don't get carried away with the pretty look and slick packaging. Don't become fainthearted when Mr. Misch tells you that cheese may be made from the milk of reindeer, mares, buffaloes, camels, and asses. Don't freeze Camembert, and don't take Brie and Camembert on picnics, for they don't travel well. Don't take cheese out of your icechest for immediate use. Let it warm up first, like red wine. Don't scoop out bits of Stilton, "England's finest," or douse it with brandy. Cut off what you need and wrap the rest in a damp towel. Don't serve cheese with champagne or with drinks before a meal.

Mr. Misch praises Colby, "a delectable Vermont cheese - kissin' cousin of Cheddar but moister and not so hard." About it and Brie he writes lyrically: " ... the sensuous taste of a brie oozing lusciousness, or of a crumbly, sharp-mild Colby, smelling of clover and grass and conjuring up pictures of hot apple pie."

And he has the eye of a connoisseur for women He speculates whether Queen Nefertite, 14th century, B.C., perhaps the most dramatically real of all the great beauties of the past, may not have been well nourished on cheese. He quotes Brill Savarin (1775-1826), the expert on food and cooking, "A meal without cheese is like a lovely woman who has lost an eye." About higher human values an unnamed Frenchman observes with authentic Gallic insight: "Pity the poor girl who has not in her life learned to know love, wine, truffles, music - and cheese. She is not yet ready for marriage."