Cheese - A Brief History
Cheese is such an "old product" that it is hard to describe in a short history. Most authorities on cheese consider that cheese was first made in the Middle East. After it was discovered that animals could be milked, the earliest type of cheese was made out of sour milk. Legend has it that cheese was discovered by an Arab nomad. He is said to have filled a saddlebag with milk for his journey across the desert. After hours of riding he stopped to quench his thirst, only to find that the milk had separated into a pale watery liquid and solid white lumps. The saddlebag, which had held the milk, contained a coagulating enzyme known as rennin, because it was made from a sheep stomach. The combination of this enzyme, the sun and the motion of his horse had caused the milk to separate into curds and whey. The nomad found that the whey was drinkable and the curds edible.
Four thousand years before the birth of Christ cheese was known to the ancient Sumerian. The Greeks credited Aristae, a son of Apollo, with the discovery. But, it was in Rome where cheese really came to be. Cheese making reached a very high standard in Rome as the ripening process had been developed there; along with the knowledge that different storage techniques developed different flavors and characteristics.
Cheese is one of the most varied foods in the world today. Cheese can be bland, buttery, creamy, pungent, sharp, salty - you get the picture. It can be hard enough to chip off in flakes or so soft it is runny and must be eaten with a spoon. Cheese's aroma can be overpowering enough to make you leave the room or can be delicate and subtle. Cheese is a perfect companion to wine, bread and fruit, it is the perfect snack or a fabulous way to finish a gourmet meal.
During the Middle Ages, monks became the innovators and developers of the classic varieties of cheese we purchase today. Cheese became an established food in Europe. The Pilgrims included cheese in the Mayflower supplies when they made their voyage to America in 1620. Cheese making quickly spread in the New World; however, it was made on family farms until the first cheese factory in the United States was built in 1851 in Oneida County, New York.
The 1880s showed a phenomenal growth in wholesale cheeses products in the United States. By then there were 3,923 dairy factories nationwide which reported to have made 216 million pounds of cheese that year. The 1904 census reported that cheese factory output was 317 million pounds that year. In the 1990s cheese production in the U.S. alone exceeded 2 billion pounds a year. More that one-third of all milk produced each year in the U.S. is used to manufacture cheese. |
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