Return to: Cheese Main Page or Gourmet Main Page

The History of Cheese ~ Cheese has long been important for the conservation and storage of the nutritional components of milk.  The cheese making process reduces the milk’s original volume to a tenth of that volume.  As a solid, cheese is easier to conserve than is milk and...thus the creation of cheese!

Although no one knows exactly how long people have been making and eating cheese, it is probably safe to say that it has been around since prehistoric times.  It is one of the world’s oldest food products.  People have been raising animals, such as sheep, goats, buffalo, reindeer, camels and yaks for milk for thousands of years.

Chances are that its discovery was accidental; the discoverer probably poured milk into a leather container, made from a sheep’s stomach, early one morning.  When he stopped to drink the milk with his lunch, he found that the milk had been converted to curds and whey by the day’s heat together with the rennet from the container’s lining.

What our prehistoric traveler found is that milk will curdle naturally if it is not used promptly; basically, the milk sours, forming an acid curd.  The curd releases a watery fluid called whey that contains the soluble constituents.  The expulsion of the whey results in the semi-solid curd that is the precursor to all cheese.

Milk curdling vessels, dating from around 5000 BC, have been found on the shores of Lake Neufchâtel in Switzerland.  And, it is possible that King Tut was a connoisseur of cheese since traces of  what is believed to be cheese were found in his tomb.

As early as 3500 BC, the Sumerians are known to have consumed cheese.  Their bas-reliefs show them milking cows and curdling milk.  Later, Homer, in his 9^th-century BC Odyssey, describes the Cyclops Polyphemus making cheese.  Homer wrote about goat cheese being made in Greek mountain caves.  One variety of cheese, that he called ‘Cynthos’ [possibly Feta] was sold to the Romans.  In the third century BC, the Greek historian Xenophon wrote of a goat cheese that had been made for centuries in Peloponnesus.  Also during the 3^rd-century BC, Aristotle mentioned a cheese that was made from mares’ and Asses’ milk.

There are many references to cheese in the Old Testament.  In 2 Samuel 17:29 it is stated that David was fed with cow’s milk when he escaped across the River Jordan.  In 1 Samuel 17:18, it was said that David gave ten cheeses to the captain of the army that was preparing to do battle with Saul.

As time passed, the art of cheese making migrated west, as did civilization, to Rome.  The Romans are known to have enjoyed curd cheese with their Bacchanals.  They also mixed sheep and goat milk to make cheese and to have added herbs and spices for flavoring.  In addition, the Romans discovered how to smoke cheese.  They also enjoyed a variety of soft cheeses, salted cheeses and a Limburger-type cheese. 

By this time, the Romans had learned to use rennet to obtain greater control over the types of curd produced.  They also used vegetable extracts, in addition to animal rennet, to induce curdling and curd formation.  They made the rennet substitute extracts by soaking such items as fig bark, safflower seeds and thistle flowers in water. 

By 127 BC Marcus Terentius Varro wrote about the differences in cheese digestibility that he had noted in cheeses that came from various locations.  In 50 AD, Columella described, in considerable detail, how to make cheese.

We also know that Julius Caesar’s legions used cheese much as modern armies use K rations.  They carried cheese with them, in 59 BC, on their march into Gaule.  Wherever the Romans went they subjugated the savages and taught them the civilized art of cheese making.

By the year 300 AD, the Romans were regularly exporting cheeses to cities around the Mediterranean coast.  It is even reported that the Roman emperor Diocletian was involved in cheese price fixing.  One of the cheeses, involved in the price fixing scheme, may have been called ‘La Luna’, the possible precursor of Parmesan.  A cheese named Parmesan was first written about in 1579 although it dates from Roman times.
 
From the 5^th-century to the 15^th-century, during the European Middle Ages, the monks perfected cheese-making techniques.  They have been credited with the development of such world famous cheeses as Brie and Camembert.  Also, in this time period, in the 13^th-century to be more exact, farmwomen developed their own varieties of cheese.  In 1267, in Déservilliers, France the first cheese cooperative was chartered to make cheese from milk collected from the farms in the region.

In the 16^th-century Emmental and Gruyère became well known in Switzerland and France.  At that time there was even a ‘marriage manual’, written for young women aspiring marriage, called La Ménagerie de Paris, that advised its readers to choose a “good and honest cheese…”.

Cheese traveled to Canada with the early French explorers, but making cheese in Canada dates only from the introduction of cattle into Québec, between 1608 and 1610.  Records indicate that, in 1630, the Arcadians supplied cheese for the French fleet in Canadian waters.

Originally, the Swiss herders made their Emmenthaler cheese in the highlands.  It wasn’t until the 15^th-century that they realized that the cheese could also be made at their farmhouses in the valleys.  By 1815, the first very crude cheese ‘factory’ was set up in Bern.  Some 750 more crude ‘factories’ were established in the region by the end of the century. 

In spite of the earlier, but token Swiss cheese factories’, cheese making was a home industry as late as the middle of the 19^th-century.  It was still modeled upon the techniques developed by the European monks during the Middle Ages.  In 1851, a farmer by the name of Jesse Williams, in upstate New York, was known as being one of the better cheese makers in his area.  His neighbors began sending him their milk for processing into cheese.  His was the world’s first de facto cheese factory.

The following table sets forth the approximate dates that some of our better known cheeses were first mentioned in written documents.  When a date is entered as an exact 100 years, this indicates that the cheese was first written about during that century:

In America, the first cheese factory was established in 1851 in Rome, New York.  Canada opened its first cheese factory in Norwich, Ontario in 1864.  In 1877, the first factory, that was intended to scientifically produce cheese, was designed in Wisconsin.  Today, Wisconsin leads the U.S. in the production of cheese, which is one of the state’s leading food exports.

For well over a century the Canadians have been ‘big’ with respect to cheese.  For the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Canada’s Dominion Department of Agriculture arranged that the world’s biggest cheese, a 22,000 pound premium Canadian Cheddar, be made.  It measured six feet high and 28 feet around.  Called ‘Le Fromage Éléphant’, it was too big to be made at any dairy.  Consequently, it was made in a Canadian Pacific freight shed.  It was taken to the fair on a special train.  While it was being set up at the fair it asserted its authority by crashing through the floor.

Never resting, Canadian officials again commissioned ‘The World’s Biggest Cheese’ in 1995.  It was a Cheddar weighing over 26 tons and measuring six feet high, 32 feet long and 4 ½ feet wide.

Today, cheese is one of the world’s most versatile foods with well in excess of 400 varieties of cheese in existence.  Its shapes are legion with hundreds of different sizes, textures, flavors and aromas.  It is used in hundreds of different ways and is a component of cuisines the world over.

Over the millenniums, cheese makers intuitively knew about the nutritional benefits of cheese in the diet.  Today, nutritionists consider cheese one of the best protein foods.  In addition to the milk proteins, it contains calcium, phosphorus, and essential amino acids.  Whole-milk cheeses also contain the fat-soluble vitamin A and carotene.    

According to the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, the United States recently led the world in the production of hard cheese with 3.3 million metric tons.  France followed the U.S. with 1.6 million metric tons.  Italy and Germany were tied for the third largest production of hard cheese at 900,000 metric tons each.

In terms of cheese consumption, Greece led the world with an average individual consumption of 23 kg [51 lb] cheese in 1996.  The French came in second with an average consumption of 21 kg [47 lb].  Americans only consumed an average of 12 kg [26 lb].