Cheese History
The Amazing World Of Cheese History
Scientists have disclosed that cheese history may date back to as early as 6000 BC. The earliest forms of cheese were thought to have been discovered as a haphazard symptom of a time when there was no refrigeration, and preservation methods were hardly advanced. The livestock gave milk only after birthing, and this milk season was a short lived yet all important staple to the survival of theses early peoples. They discovered that leaving milk out in the open, where air could get to it, changed the milk, often for the better. Some vats turned up bitter, horrible smelling, and discolored milk renderings, and these were tossed. Yet other vats produced a slightly sour, smooth, white, substance with a gentle, appetizing odor. They didn’t know how to make it happen, or when it would happen, but these ancient experiments in survival produced the earliest and most simple form of cheese. Yogurt.
The next centuries of cheese history take us through Africa, India, and Egypt. Yogurt kept for up to two weeks, but was still not a sufficient, long term form of preservation. The need for nutritious, filling staples was great during these times of discovery and migration, when shepherds and warriors alike would be called away from home for months on end, with nothing but dried animal intestines and slivers of crisp bread to see them through. Further developments were made to the yogurt process, still in its infancy stage due to the lack of knowledge about the living organisms whose digestion of the milk caused either the good or the bad fermentation of it.
With the exception of the native peoples of India, who worshipped and nurtured their bovine idols, the yogurt makers incorporated the stomach lining of mammals into the standing milk, hoping to harden it. Little did they know that this enzyme protein was exactly what the milk needed to separate its solids from its liquids. A few centuries of trial and error later found rounds of hard cheeses wrapped in the stomach linings of mammals and stored in cold, dirt cellars. These primitive cheeses are thought to have been edible for up to 5 years, and may be responsible for the survival of the human race in some of the harsher climactic regions of the world.
Cheeses history takes us now to England, approximately 1170 AD. A tiny town in Somerset County by the name of Cheddar has developed a hard rennet cheese that causes a buzz with the privileged and royal folks throughout the country, and the recipe is duplicated and reinvented time and again. We don’t capitalize cheddar, as we capitalize Swiss, because there was no protection offered to the origin of this, our most popular and widely used cheese, in its early days. But I would like to thank Cheddar from the bottom of my heart for their beautiful contribution to the history of cheese.