Cheese
“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?”
– Charles de Gaulle
“I just don’t see the point of not eating cheese. I mean, if God didn’t want us to eat cheese, would he have let man invent it?”
Lisa Samson
Before Tilly and I get into the history of cheese, be careful who feeds you cheese. In the 17th century, spells and incantations used cheese to place a spell either on the female a man lusts after, or, for women, the wealthy male they wished to marry.
Cheese is one of the few foods that predate recorded history. So how old is cheese?
Tilly: Clifton Fadiman: “Cheese is milk’s leap towards immortality”.
Some historians believe it began by accident over 7,000 years ago. Storing and transporting milk in the bladders made of ruminants’ stomachs. You see, the stomach had an inherent supply of rennet that encouraged curdling, which formed cheese. As to where this happened, possibly Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, or the Sahara.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Rennet noun
A: The contents of the stomach of an unweaned animal and especially a calf
B: The lining membrane of a stomach or one of its compartments (such as the fourth of a ruminant) used for curdling milk. Also: a preparation of the stomach of animals used for this purpose
Rennin Noun ren·nin ˈre-nən: an enzyme that coagulates milk and is used in making cheese and junkets especially: one from the mucous membrane of the stomach of a calf
Now that you know what Rennet is, Tilly, are you and your fans still going to eat cheese?
Tilly: Categorically, yes! The only cheese I am not fond of is smoked cheese and that strange stuff Americans squeeze out of tubes …
Some more dates: Ancient Beginnings: Mesopotamia and the Middle East saw the earliest cheesemaking around 8,000 BCE, driven by the domestication of sheep and goats. Ancient Egypt left behind physical evidence of cheese in tombs and murals over 4,000 years ago, including solid cheese found in jars at Saqqara. Greece and Rome refined the craft, creating feta-style brined cheeses and hard rations for Roman soldiers expanding across Europe.
Might have known the Romans had a hand in the craft – surprised that fellow Apicius isn’t mentioned.
Let’s start with the first production of cheese not made in the stomachs of animals. The earliest evidence for cheese making was found in holed pottery well over seven thousand years ago. So where were those potteries found? Everywhere from Poland to Croatia and Switzerland.
Tilly: Holed pottery? Wouldn’t the cheese fall out …
Hard, salted cheese most likely started in the grasslands of the Sahara. Cheese made in Europe, where the climate is much cooler, required less salt for preservation. This gave the aged European cheeses their unique flavors.
For those of you who prefer cheddar cheese, then go back to the 1500s to Tilly’s homeland, to Somerset, England. It was made in caves in the Gorge due to the humidity and steady temperature for aging. So how did it get its name? Well, it was named after its place of origin, Somerset Region, in the town of Cheddar.
What other cheeses that we enjoy today did Great Britain make? According to The British Cheese Board, there are over 700 named British cheeses produced in the UK. Business-wise, it has also become an important export of the UK.
Mass production of cheese began in Switzerland in 1815. The large-scale production found real success in the United States. Thank you, Jesse Williams, in Rome, New York.
One last note: factory-made cheese overtook traditional cheesemaking during WW2.
Since then, it is the factories that have been the main source of most cheese made in America and in Europe.
Tilly: Monasteries across medieval Europe became centers of experimentation, perfecting classics like Parmesan, Roquefort, and Munster. The Industrial Revolution shifted production from local farms and monasteries to commercial factories. Processed Cheese was patented by James L. Kraft in 1916, creating shelf-stable rations widely used by the military during World War I.
I do think we could do without processed cheese. Might have been handy in the war, but it’s pretty awful stuff and not necessary now.
In 2022, the planet Earth’s production of cheese from whole cow’s milk was 22.6 million tonnes. The United States made 28%, followed by Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Which country eats the most cheese? France, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, and of course Germany, averaging 25 kg (55 lb) for each person per year.
Tilly: That’s a lot of cheese! And an expensive pastime. AI Overview: On average, people in the UK eat about 10.7 to 11.5 kilos (around 23 to 25 pounds) of cheese per person each year, which breaks down to roughly 30 grams per day.
Some other useless information:
- Mice do not actually like cheese and tend to actively avoid it in favour of grains, fruits, and sugary foods.
- Smelly feet connection: Stinky cheeses share the same bacterium, Brevibacterium linens, that causes foot odour
- Most stolen food: Cheese is the most frequently stolen food item in the entire world, with roughly 4% of total production being pilfered.
- The holes in Swiss: The classic holes in Swiss cheese are not caused by gas bubbles from bacteria, but rather by microscopic flecks of hay falling into the milk during milking.
- A Serbian donkey milk called pule is widely regarded as the most expensive cheese on earth, fetching upwards of $600 per pound. Only about 100 donkeys are milked for pule, and the cheese is smoked after it’s made.
- According to a study by the British Cheese Board, thanks to a high amount of the amino acid tryptophan in cheese, eating a piece or two of cheese before hitting the hay every night can help you fall asleep quicker.
So enjoy that cheese; just be careful, y’all, who is feeding you that cheese.
“Sweet dreams are made of cheese. Who am I to dis a brie?”
Olive and Tilly