 Mankind's constant friend
© Denzil Green
Rennet is used to encourage the milk to curdle. Bacteria is then added to develop flavour. Most Cheeses are naturally white, so colour is often added.
Lots of salt is used in making Cheese. The salt encourages a protective rind to form. The heavier the salting, the heavier the rind that forms.
Some Cheeses are wrapped in cloth, in which case they are often not touched during their aging process.
Fats act as a softener or lubricant in Cheese. Higher fat Cheeses will be softer Cheeses; harder Cheeses will be lower-fat ones. You'll notice that many of the hard, grating Cheeses are made from skim milk.
Many Cheeses have their rinds washed while aging with brine, wine, wax or oils to prevent the Cheese from drying out and moulds from forming on the rind, and to enhance the flavour. They are usually washed with brine (salt-water), but sometimes with wine or other liquids. See separate entry on Washed-Rind Cheeses.
In making Cheese, the temperature ranges between 95 F (34 C) and 102 F (39 C) can be especially critical: 95 F will give a very soft curd Cheese, 102 F will yield a very firm Cheese, and each few degrees in between are practically a separate firmness of Cheese along the way.
Cheese Food
Processed Cheese or "Cheese food" -- such as Cheese Slices or Cheese Spreads -- are made of Cheese with fats and other additives to help achieve the desired texture, consistency and shelf life. See separate entry on Processed Cheese.
Cooking Tips
If you need curls or shavings of a Cheese, such as parmesan, a vegetable peeler is the ideal tool.
When you heat Cheese past a certain temperature, the proteins in the Cheese coagulate and separate from the fat and water in the Cheese. Tough, stringy masses result. Hard, well-ripened Cheeses are better for heating because their broken-down proteins have a harder time coagulating; this broken down protein also makes them more easy to blend into a sauce.
In Swiss fondue, the alcohol in the wine lowers the boiling point to help prevent the Cheese from curdling.
Most Cheese boards are really sad affairs, with sad, tired, mean little bits of Cheese on them that show the markings of tight plastic wrap on them. Try putting out just one large, impressive, generous-sized hunk of a gorgeous Cheese, and accompany it with some relish bits or spend the money you save on really getting a wine that complements it.
Equivalents
1 oz grated Cheese = 30g = 4 tablespoons = 1/4 cup
4 oz cheese = 125g = 1 cup, grated
Storage
Wrap soft Cheeses in waxed paper or greaseproof paper before storing in fridge; don't leave them in any plastic wrap they came in. Some, though, suggest storing all Cheese in a sealable plastic bag in the fridge with a sugar cube in it, saying that the sugar deters mould.
Hard Cheeses such as brick, cheddar, American pizza mozzarella, etc., can be frozen, though they are best used for cooking after freezing.
It is much trickier to freeze soft Cheeses such as Brie and be left with something you can do anything with after thawing. Fresh Cheeses such as Cream Cheese, Cottage Cheese & Ricotta freeze a little better. If the Cream Cheese is grainy when you thaw it, whip it smooth. It is best used after thawing for cooking (e.g. casseroles, baked pastas, etc), rather than served as is on a plate, as even after whipping it smooth the texture won't be the same as before freezing.
History
The guess is that cheese probably came about through people trying to carry milk in animal skins, which would curdle. From there, the thinking is that the curdled milk in skin bags led to two kinds of dairy products: one for items such as Yoghurt and Kefir, the other being Cheese.
Cheese appears in the Old Testament. In the Middle East, Cheese was being made as early as 6000 BC from cow's and goat's milk. Egyptians made it.
Ancient Greeks made Cheese from sheep and goat's milk. The Greeks knew about Rennet, which improved their cheesemaking and gave them greater control over the process, so that it could start to become a commercial activity. They sold Cheese to the Romans.
The Romans learned cheesemaking from others such as the Greeks, and developed it to an art. They brought their cheesemaking know-how to Britain in 55 AD. The Romans didn't like milk: however, they did like Cheese, and it is interesting to note that some of their more popular Cheeses came from the Roman provinces which are now parts of Switzerland and France.
During the Dark Ages, Cheese production from cow's milk was disrupted, as the lowlands where cow herds had once been kept during the "Pax Romana" became subject to disorder and invasion. Remote mountainous areas were a bit more overlooked by all the chaos, allowing people there to develop Cheeses from goat and sheep milk. But no real new Cheese varieties appeared during the Dark Ages.
As things settled in the lowlands at the end of the Middle Ages, cow's milk became available again, and people there had the stability not only to breed cows but also to plan for the future in making Cheese. Cheesemaking needs a stable environment for the animals to produce milk, and for the Cheese to be manufactured.
Full-cream Cheeses were reserved for the rich (in contrast to now, when lower-fat Cheeses are flogged to us at a premium.) Skim milk turned out harder, cheaper Cheeses that would store and ship well. Using skim milk allowed the cream to be skimmed off to make butter, then Cheese could be made from the skim milk.
James VI forbid the export of Cheese from Scotland in 1573. In 1661, Charles II put a tax on Cheese being exported from Scotland.
Literature & Lore
Customer: Figures. Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me:
Owner: Yessir?
Customer: (deliberately) Have you in fact got any Cheese here at all.
Owner: Yes,sir.
Customer: Really?
(pause)
Owner: No. Not really, sir.
-- Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch, 1972
"Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of Cheese!" -- Falstaff. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I, Scene I. Shakespeare.
Language Notes
The Greeks drained some of their Cheeses in wicker baskets that they called "formos". The Romans adopted this word as "forma". From this came "formaggio", the Italian word for Cheese, and "fromage", the French word.
In Tuscany and some other parts of Italy, Cheese is called "cacio" instead of "formaggio". Cacio comes directly from the other Roman word, "caseus" or "caseum", for Cheese. The English word for Cheese came from that Latin word, too, as did the German word "Käse".
In England, hard Cheese made from skim milk was called "flet" Cheese.
See Also
Processed Cheese, Rennet
Other entries for Cheese
Affinage, American Cheeses, Casu Marzu, Cheese Rinds, Creamery, Double/Triple-Cream Cheese, Extra-Hard Cheeses, Firm Cheeses, Goat's Milk Cheeses, Mexican Cheeses, Pate (of a Cheese), Processed Cheese, Queso Fundido, Rennet, Semi-Firm Cheeses, Sheep's Milk Cheeses, Skim-Milk Cheeses, Smear-Ripened Cheeses, Soft Cheeses, Surface-Ripened Cheeses, Sweet Curd Cheeses, The Crumblies, Truckle, Washed-Curd Cheeses, Washed-Rind Cheeses, Yak Cheese, Yeel Cheese
Other entries for Dairy
Butterfat, Butter, Milk, Nondairy Topping
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Also called:
 Fromage (French)
Käse (German)
Formaggio (Italian)
Queso (Spanish)
Caseum (Roman)
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