As requested by David "Gubba" Gubb, originally from Norwich, now a Regulatory Operations Associate in Peterborough. He was once the president of the oldest rowing club in the world - Braesenose College, Oxford.
Cheese is a collective name for milk-based food products. The word cheese comes from a proto-Indo-European word, "kwat" meaning, "ferment" or "sour."
According to Pliny the Elder, cheese was a sophisticated enterprise even by the founding of the Roman Empire, and so predates recorded history. Some propose cheese was discovered between 8000-3000BCE.
The legend of cheese runs that an Arab trader was storing milk in a container made from the inflated stomach of a sheep when the rennet in the organ turned the milk to cheese.
Ancient Greek myth (circa 800BCE) credits Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese. And bee-keeping. And how to make nets. Busy guy. But not all his idea. He was taught this by the Myrtle-nymphs (the nymphs of the flower Myrtle, if you must know. A plant related to eucalyptus).
However, it was the Romans that spread cheese like some lurid amused bovine spread across Europe. And with the fall of the Roman Empire (on September 4th, 476ACE - a Monday. Ever since, Mondays have never been the same again) people could no longer engage in long-distance cheese trade, or gamble of cheese futures. Presumably one of the few things you could engage in 1500 years ago. This meant they had to spend their time developing their own cheeses.
Britain leads the way in diversification of cheese with over 700 different cheeses (and these only the ones that are officially recognised). France and Italy have about 400 apiece.
Whilst on France, indeed, Charles DeGalle - a staunch favourite of Phil Mann's Full Minds (Phil Menn's Full Mind?) and classic Frenchman that everyone outside France loves to hate, once asked of his own country, "How can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?" I guess you had to be there.
Making Cheese
This is hideous. To make cheese you must seperate the milk into curds and whey by souring the milk with vinegar, acid or bacteria and adding rennet. Some cheese-making bacteria is related to menigitus, pneumonia or necrotising fasciitis (that's the real-life zombie flesh-eating disease to you and me.) Think about that the next time you're scoffing down some Port Salut.
It's this bacteria that when reacting and producing carbon dioxcide creates the holes in Swiss cheese.
The cheese is now curd (a lumpy white thing) and the whey (the white juice like you get in sealed packed of mozzerella) is removed. This whey is used as an additive in processed foods, dried and sold as body-building powder or you can drink it. In fact in the 1700s they enjoyed this particularly delightful beverage.
Chin Chin
Take a quantity of whey - or cheese juice.
Mix it with white wine.
Pour in boiling water like you're making a nice cuppa
Syphon and sieve off the curd and sediment that settles at the bottom (yum!)
Add a few teaspoons of sugar (this for the builders among you)
A dash of lemon balm and a slice of lemon.
"Enjoy" your hot, cheesy, lemony, alcoholic soup in a traditional wooden tankard.
Anyway
Some cheese are just drained, salted, packaged and sold. Others have to be heated, stretched, cheddared, washed, salted, ripened, have mold spore cultures prepared and added and preserved through chemicals. To cheddar a cheese you must chop off the corners while it's setting and reform it several times. This stops the edges drying out.
The softness of a cheese is determined by its water content. Cheeses with a slightly higher water content are better for melting and employed usefully in snacks on toast. These semi-soft-to-firm cheeses like Emmental, Gruyere, Gouda, Edam, Jarlsberg and Cantal are perfect.
Processed Cheese
...has an extended shelf-life, resistance to seperation and a strong uniformity. Like the Red Army. It's made by taking normal cheese and adding unfermented cheese, emulsifiers, salt, colouring, whey, sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, tartrate and citrate, cream, milkfat, water and spices. There are three types of processed cheese.
- Pasturised processed cheese
- Pasturised processed cheese food (which MUST contain at least 51% "optional cheese ingrediants")
- Pasturised processed cheese food spread (which MUST be spreadable at room temperature and less than 60% water).
Stilton is a village near Peterborough, once famed for its cheese and an important coach stop on the Great North Road as it is 70 miles North of London. Daniel Defoe was fond of Stilton's cheesy comestables.
Although this small market village progenated Stilton cheese it is FORBIDDEN BY LAW to make it there. Due to the cynically and ironically named Protected Geographical Status of the cheese, you can only make Stilton cheese in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire but NOT in North-West Cambridgeshire where Stilton actually is.
Cheese Consumption
The list of those making the most cheese contains few surprises:
- The United States of America - 4,275,000 metric tonnes
- Germany - 1,927,000t
- France - 1,884,000t
- Italy - 1,149,000t
- Netherlands - 732,000t
France is also the world's biggest exporter of cheese, although to give you an idea of scale, it's the third most prolific cheese maker in the world and only exports one third of its cheese.
Ireland, on the other hand exports 75% of its cheese. Probably because even the Irish won't eat it. Even more unsurprisingly, America makes the most cheese. But exports very little. Remember that in just a moment, won't you?
In terms of cheese eating (consumption) - France surprises us again by not being number 1. Greece leads the way here. Every person in Greece (on average) eats 30kg of cheese a year, where feta cheese acccounts for three quarters of this. That's 62 grams of feta a day. The weight of a tub of hairgel, or the average man's wrist watch. A wristwatch of cheese a day keeps the (somethingsomething) away. In France they eat 24.6kg of cheese a year.
America is 13th on the list, consuming 15kg per year per person. But let's recap. So on the first list we found out that America makes more cheese than anyone else in the world. But they only consume the 13th highest amount in the world. So what happens to the rest of it? Well they don't pack it off to starving Africa as we've already found out that America exports very little of their cheese.
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO AMERICAS CHEESE? Presumably its being piled up somewhere in a vast resevoir. A huge mountain of cheese looming over the American people.
Just to finish up, I'd like to answer a few questions about cheese.
Can you freeze cheese?
Yes, please.
At what temperature should I serve cheese?
Well if you're going to do it properly, take it out of the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature before serving. It improves the flavour.
Is the moon made of cheese?
Don't be like the wolf. There's an old folktale about how an animal often preyed on by wolves (let's call her a hen) tricks the wolf into thinking that the reflection of the moon in a deep well is actually a cheese floating in it. And as wolves love cheese more than they love the hunting and catching of small flightless birds, the wolf literally leaps at the opportunity and drowns horrifically like in all the best children's tales.
Can you make Human cheese?
Well, kinda. You have to add a bit of cows milk as human milk is a little low of protein. It is possible though. Apparrently its quite sweet.
When did our most famous cheeses come about?
Cheddar was invented circa 1500, Permesan in 1597, Gouda in 1697 and Camenbert in 1791.
