random essay about cheese

A Brief History of Cheese [essay]

Exploring the history of some of the most popular types of cheeses

Let’s begin with a little bit of history. Cheese is one of the oldest foods we humans have produced, possibly dating from the beginning of sheep and cattle herding 10,000 years ago. That said, the discovery of cheese making was probably accidental. It’s likely that the curdling action of rennet was discovered when a herdsman poured milk into a sack or pouch made of an animal’s stomach, and this may have happened independently in Europe, the Middle East, or Central Asia. The Ancient Sumerians and Egyptians certainly made cheese, and Homer speaks of cheese in both the Illiad and the Odyssey . The oldest archaelogical example of solid cheese was found in an Ancient Egyptian tomb dating to around 3,200 years ago. However, the earliest archaeological evidence of cheese making dates back to 7,700-9,000 years ago in Mongolia where residues of cheese making products were found in ceramics pots 1 .

Cheese was a staple food in both Classical Greece and Rome, although it is not clear that the either civilization was responsible for expanding awareness of cheese, as most places they traded or conquered were already making cheese in some manner or another. Nevertheless, it was in Europe, more than elsewhere, that cheese became so wildly diverse both in production methods and the final product. Cheese was a staple product throughout the Middle Ages, and such were the differences in European cheeses that in 1477 a Savoyard polymath named Pantaleone da Cofienza published a book, Summa Lacticiniorum (“A Compendium of Milk Products”), that was devoted almost entirely to a discussion of European cheeses [1] .

As Cofienza was aware, cheese is most commonly made from cow, sheep, goat, and water buffalo milk, although other types of milk, such as mare’s milk, reindeer milk, and camel milk, are also used. Cheese styles, textures, and flavors depend on the origin of the milk (including the animal's diet), whether the milk has been pasteurized, the amount of milkfat, bacteria and mold, processing, and aging. Sometimes herbs, spices, or wood smoke are used for flavoring, and other cheeses are internally or externally flavored with chives, garlic, or fruit. Cheese ranges in color from off-white and pale yellow (most common), to light-brown or dark-brown, to full of blue or green veins, to orange. Orange color does not occur naturally in cheese, but is generally created by adding annatto, an orange-red dye made from the nuts of the achiote tree. This was originally done to make winter milk or industrially produced cheese look richer in flavor, but it soon became standard practice for some types of cheese such as Red Leicester, a mild and crumbly English cheese, and Mimolette, a hard and slightly nutty cheese from the north of France. In the United States, orange colored cheese, whatever the name, is especially popular.

What da Cofienza did not say but seems to have intuited, is that cheese is a nutritional super food because it concentrates most of the nourishment of the milk, and makes the milk last much longer. The solids extracted from the milk in order to make cheese contain almost all of the milk fat (assuming the milk has not been skimmed) and fat-soluble vitamins, most of the proteins, and some of the minerals. What’s left behind, the whey, is also nutritious, as it contains sugar, small amounts of protein, and the water-soluble vitamins and minerals. Whey can be drunk as a beverage, dried to make protein powder, or cooked and concentrated to make whey cheeses, such as Ricotta, which is light textured, creamy, and slightly sweet. Most whey, however, is simply discarded.

Historically, soft cheeses were made for relatively quick consumption and thus eaten in or near the area where they were made, whereas harder cheeses were aged for many months, and could be exported great distances. Since the mid-nineteenth century and the invention of refrigerated transport, soft and semi-soft-cheeses can be exported to all parts of the globe, although they should still be eaten sooner than hard cheeses, as they are likely to be invaded by other bacteria (i.e. to rot) long before hard cheeses are. Put another way, your cheese is always alive, but you don’t necessarily want it be alive in all ways.

In order to learn more about specific cheeses that you might find in the store, it’s helpful to understand how cheese is made. All cheese making begins by “ripening” the milk, that is, by causing lactobacillales (lactic acid bacteria) to sour the milk. This is why cheese is a fermented food, and it is these bacteria that begin to give cheese its particular flavors. In early cheese making, the bacteria were probably left to chance. For most modern cheese, however, bacterial cultures are added by the cheese-maker. These bacterial cultures produce not only lactic acid, which gives cheese its sharp taste, but also diacetyl, which has a buttery taste. Some cheeses such as Emmentaler (a.k.a. “Swiss Cheese”) also use propionic bacteria, which consume lactic acid and produce a round, almost hazel-nut taste, as well as carbon dioxide bubbles. It is these bubbles that give Emmental its characteristic holes.

During cheese making, the milk is always kept warm or even slightly heated in order to encourage bacterial growth. This can be done by adding hot water to the curd, or by heating the walls or “jacket” of the cheese vat with hot water. Once the milk has soured, the next step is to separate the curd (milk solids) from the whey (mostly water). “Curdling” is usually done by adding rennet to the soured milk. Rennet is loaded with enzymes and is traditionally extracted from the fourth stomach of an unweaned calf. However, vegetable-based rennets have long existed, and some dairies rely on them uniquely, although most cheese is made with and most rennet is now made recombinantly and comes in liquid or powder form. Some cheeses such as Pecorino Romano, a hard, salty, tangy, ewe’s milk cheese are always curdled with lamb’s rennet, others are curdled with vinegar or even lemon juice. But whatever is used to curdle the milk, the proteins in the milk coagulate and shrink, trapping the fat globules and forcing out more of the watery whey. Once the rennet has been carefully stirred into the milk, the curd is allowed to set, that is, to form a moist gel.

It’s at this point that the difference between hard and soft cheeses begins to occur. For most soft cheeses, the set curd is simply scooped out with a perforated ladle, and placed into a perforated mold or form (which gives us the Italian word formaggio and the French words fromage ). This allows the curd to continue to drain off whey by gravity alone. For fresh goat’s milk cheeses that’s pretty much the entire process, but for two of my favorite soft cheeses, Camembert and Brie de Meaux, the curd is poured into shallow, round molds and then sprayed with the other kind of mold (i.e. a fungus), in this case Penicillium candidum , which promotes the growth of an edible, off-white rind. Thus, Camembert and Brie begin as insipid, semi-soft cheeses, but as they age the proteolytic enzymes released by the mold break down the protein chains in the cheese, producing an ever-creamier, and ultimately almost liquid cheese, with a strong odor but mild taste.

However, to make a harder cheeses the set curd is cut with a multiple-bladed “breaker” to promote more whey extraction. Once the curd has been cut it is allowed to set a second time, but this time it is firmer, almost rubbery. Having reset, the cut curd is often “cooked” (i.e. heated to a higher temperature, usually around 40 c. or 105 f., and never hotter than 60 c. or 140 f.), which promotes greater whey expulsion and creates a smoother and more even-textured end product. Some of the bacteria are killed in the cooking process, but hardly all, so that even a “cooked” cheese remains very much alive with micro-organisms.

Cutting and then cooking the curd helps to create protein and fat globules, now curds (plural), anywhere from pea to walnut size, from which still more whey is drained off. Cottage cheese, perhaps the mildest of all cheeses, is simply sliced and rinsed curd that is never pressed. But for hard cheeses, the curds are salted and put into a mold, or else they are formed into loaves and allowed to reset. These curd loaves are then sliced or run through a mill to produce even smaller, almost rubbery “grains.” The more the curd is cut, the more whey it drains, and depending on the kind or quality of cheese being made, the cheese-maker carefully monitors both water content and pH level throughout the cheese-making process. If a low acidity (i.e. not sharp) hard cheese such as Colby, Monterey Jack, or Gouda, is desired, the curds are rinsed in pure water before being drained and pressed.

In the case of Cheddar, the world’s most popular cheese—although it varies greatly in quality, texture and taste—the loaves of curd are sliced into 3 cm. (1.5-2 inch) thick slabs the size of notebook paper, which are then stacked four to eight high, and turned over ever ten minutes or so for roughly an hour. This stacking and turning encourages yet more whey-extraction, the formation of more protein chains, and greater acidity, and it is known as “cheddaring.” While some other hard cheeses use the cheddaring technique, traditionally this is what made cheddar cheese unique. After an hour or so, the stacked slabs of curd are then sliced and run through a mill, which further reduces the size of the curd. As with other hard cheeses, these “grains” are salted, stirred, and then put into a mold and compressed. Of course many readers will note that much American cheddar is actually a fairly mild, moist cheese, and this is because the curd is rinsed and not cut so fine, thus reducing acidity and allowing for greater moisture retention. It has nothing like the sharpness or earthy flavor and slightly crumbly texture of high-quality cheddar.

For most cheeses, salt is added to the cut curd both for reasons of taste and preservation. Of course too much salt would kill all the bacteria in a cheese, but a judicious amount slows down bacterial growth and allows the cheese to age without rotting. And whether salted or not, the cut curds are now put into the molds that determine their final shape. Since there is still some whey in the curd, most molds allow for drainage while the curds are being pressed. For example, Manchego, a slightly tangy, hard sheep’s milk cheese from Spain, was traditionally pressed in molds made of plaited straw, which left a distinctive pattern on the outside of the cheese. Today, that same pattern is created by metal molds.

Once a cheese is hard enough to be removed from its form, it is salted if it has not already been so. In fact, a “pickled” cheese like Feta, made from sheep’s milk, is removed from its mold and aged in a brine made of salt water and whey up to the point of consumption, while mozzarella curd is stretched by hand or machine during the cooking process, formed into balls, and then placed in a very mild brine. The best, and fattiest mozzarellas are made from Italian water buffalo milk. Hard cheeses such as Gouda, Gruyère and Comté, all buttery-nutty in flavor, are soaked in brine for a few days or weeks to allow the salt to penetrate into the cheese and to help form a bacteria resistant rind. Beaufort cheese from the French Alps, quite similar to Gruyère in flavor, is both brined and externally salted with a daily salt rub, and the highest-quality cheddar is both internally and externally salted before being bound in cheesecloth, which is then rubbed with whey butter.

Broadly speaking, a warmer environment speeds cheese ripening, whereas a cooler environment slows it down. Likewise, a relatively dry environment is necessary for cheeses to harden properly, so that cheeses destined for long ageing such as Parmesano-Reggiano, which is both salty, sweet, and nutty all at once, need a relatively dry and cool environment. A moist environment is better for soft cheeses as it prevents desiccation and promotes the growth of desired molds. Semi-soft cheeses such as Limburger, Munster, and Époisse, are surface ripened with bacteria, which give them their famously smelly odors, although the inside of these cheeses is generally mild. Some other cheeses are covered in leaves, ash, or soot, or washed in alcohol as a way to slow or prevent surface bacterial growth and impart subtle flavors. Emmental receives no surface treatment at all other than being cleaned and waxed. Lastly, blue cheeses are inoculated with a culture of blue mold, either at the forming stage, as with Roquefort from France, or once the cheese has been formed, as with Stilton from England, Cashel Blue from Ireland, and Maytag Blue from Iowa. In all cases, one can see the injection marks. Roquefort is the saltiest and most pungent of the blue cheeses and is made from sheep’s milk; most blue cheeses are made from cow’s milk, and some, like Cambozola from Germany, are mild and creamy with only a hint of mold flavor.

This very brief survey of how most cheeses are made has focused upon the cheeses you are most likely to find in the store, but be aware that the number of artisanal cheese-makers in America is growing by the year, and many stores are increasing the number of foreign cheeses they sell as well. Consequently, you may be able to find very similar cheeses to the one’s just described, but with names with which you are not familiar. Your general knowledge of cheese styles should help you to determine what the cheese might taste like, but if you can, ask the cheese-monger for a comparison. Better yet, ask for a sample! When you do purchase a cheese, my advice is to rescue it from the ignominy of cellophane, if that’s what it came in, and store it in wax paper, or else leave it unwrapped but put it in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator. For harder cheeses that you want to keep around for a long time, store them in a sealable sandwich bag. The goal is to let your cheese breathe, but not to give it so much air that it dries out or allows for the growth of unwanted bacteria or mold.

Did I mention that I love cheese? A few years ago a fellow cheese-fanatic friend in London sent me what he thought was an explanation for my cheese love. According to scientists at the University of Michigan cheese is addictive! Well, it turns out that that’s not what the scientists actually said. In fact, the study was about food cravings, and the food that was most often craved was pizza [2] . Certain readers extrapolated from this that pizza’s allegedly addictive quality came from casomorphins, the tiny protein crystals that result from the breakdown of casein, the primary protein of milkfat. True, casomorphins can activate the human opioid system, just as drugs like morphine do, but the degree is negligible and in most cases of cheese eating doesn’t occur at all. More importantly, our brain registers with delight when it senses protein, fat, and salt, which most cheeses contain to some degree. But the real reason for pizza’s position atop the “craveability” index is the combination of carbohydrates and sugar (in the dough and tomato sauce). In other words, pizza has a massive glycemic load, and causes our blood sugar to spike. We humans like that. But fear not, there is nothing addictive about cheese. You may, however, fall in love with it.

Image attribution: By smial (talk) - Own work, FAL

About Fermentology

Essay on Cheese

Students are often asked to write an essay on Cheese in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Cheese

What is cheese.

Cheese is a food made from milk. People have been making cheese for thousands of years. It comes in many tastes and shapes. Some cheese is hard, and some are soft. We use it in cooking or eat it alone.

Making Cheese

To make cheese, you start with milk. The milk is warmed up and an ingredient is added to make it thick. This thick part is the start of cheese. It is then pressed into shapes and sometimes aged.

Types of Cheese

There are many kinds of cheese. Cheddar, mozzarella, and parmesan are popular. Each type has a unique flavor and use in recipes.

Health Benefits

Cheese is full of nutrients like calcium and protein. It helps build strong bones. But, eating too much can be unhealthy, so enjoy it in moderation.

Cheese Around the World

250 words essay on cheese.

Cheese is a food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other animals. It’s created by adding a special ingredient called “rennet” to milk, which makes it thick. Then, the solid part, which is the cheese, is separated from the liquid. Cheese can be soft and spreadable or hard and good for grating.

There are many kinds of cheese. Some are mild like Mozzarella, which is often used on pizza. Others are strong in taste, like Blue Cheese. Cheddar is a popular cheese that comes from England and is orange or white. Each type of cheese has its own special taste and way it is used in cooking.

How Cheese is Used

People eat cheese in lots of ways. It can be sliced on sandwiches, melted in dishes like macaroni and cheese, or eaten by itself as a snack. Cheese adds flavor to food and can also be part of a healthy diet because it has important nutrients like calcium.

Cheese is loved all over the world. In Italy, Parmesan is grated over pasta. In France, Brie is a soft cheese that’s very popular. And in the United States, American cheese is often used in burgers. Each country has its own special cheeses that are part of its culture and food traditions.

Cheese is a tasty and versatile food that has been enjoyed for thousands of years. From snacks to main dishes, cheese makes meals delicious and can be part of a balanced diet.

500 Words Essay on Cheese

There are many kinds of cheese in the world. Some are soft like Brie and Camembert, while others are hard like Cheddar and Parmesan. There are even cheeses with holes in them, like Swiss cheese, and blue cheeses with spots of mold that give them a strong taste. Mozzarella is a cheese that is often used on pizza because it melts well. Each type of cheese has its own special taste and is used in different kinds of food.

Cheese can be eaten on its own or used in cooking. It is a key ingredient in many dishes, such as lasagna, grilled cheese sandwiches, and cheesecakes. People also enjoy cheese with crackers, fruit, and wine. Cheeses like Parmesan are often grated over pasta dishes to add flavor. Cheese can also be melted, spread, or sliced to be added to recipes.

Health Benefits and Concerns

How cheese is made around the world.

Different countries have their own special ways of making cheese. For example, in Italy, Parmesan cheese is made with a special recipe and has to be aged for a long time to get its hard texture and rich flavor. In France, Brie cheese is made in a way that gives it a soft and creamy texture. In the United States, processed cheese is popular, which is made by mixing different kinds of cheese together and adding other ingredients to make it melt easily.

Fun Facts About Cheese

Cheese has been around for a very long time. Some say it was made by accident when milk was stored in containers made from the stomach of animals, which has natural enzymes that curdle milk. Also, did you know that there is a Cheese Museum in the Netherlands? People from all over the world visit it to learn about cheese and taste different kinds.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

On the Culinary and Artistic History of Cheese

Noëlle janaczewska: “cheese is a cheese is a cheese.”.

I don’t know much about cheese, but I know what I like. Crumbly wensleydale. Comté. Provolone. Taleggio. Stilton. Cumin-studded leyden. Sage derby…

I’m taking in the geometry of a cheese showcase in Sydney. The arrangement of semicircles, triangles, squares and rectangles. Blocks from here, and from there—France, Italy, England, the Netherlands. I have a modest and much treasured collection of old geography textbooks and atlases, and as I regard this cheesy cornucopia I’m concocting one of their charts. Printed with an economy of color and detail: The Global Travels of Cheese .

Tasmanian brie, cheese infused with lemon myrtle, Persian feta, quark from Germany, extra creamy, extra bitey, salt reduced, vegan. The sunny profile of double gloucester. Port-salut from Brittany. Hard pressed, stretched curd and strong cheese. Yellow discs, red-waxed spheres, parsley-speckled, cranberry-layered, washed rind, cave-aged, smoked, soft, blue, goat—not too keen on goat to be honest.

Neighborhood supermarkets—be they in Sydney, in Amsterdam, or anywhere else for that matter—reveal not only what the locals are eating, but a whole subtext of culinary attitudes. They’re my first port of call in a foreign city. So it’s after investigating the Albert Heijn supermarket on Leidsestraat that I walk to another place I always go whenever I’m in Amsterdam: the Rijksmuseum. Through streets that smell of spilt beer, dope, and that canal-damp common to water cities the world over. Visitors rush to Rembrandt. The gift shop is selling bars of soap disguised as emmental or its budget lookalike, maasdam. But there’s less cheese on the walls than I remember, and as I gaze at the sole “cheese painting” on show I wonder if the abundance of my previous trips is something I’ve imagined.

Tiers of cheese are center stage in many still lifes from the opening decades of the seventeenth century. Hefty half-wheels anchor Floris Claesz van Dijck’s 1615 painting. Ditto paintings by Floris van Schooten and Clara Peeters that I’ve seen reproduced online and in print. Still lifes from this period typically depict domestic fare, the components of a simple meal, and are known as ontbijtje (breakfast pieces). Bread and cheese, maybe an artichoke or a herring, a tankard of beer. All very egalitarian.

After slim pickings on the cheese-in-art front I turn my attention to the artistry of Amsterdam’s cheese shops with their close-packed shelves and suggested “threesomes” (buy three get a discount). From an array of cheeses labelled “farmhouse lunch” I select a quarter moon of brandnetelkaas, its pale face freckled with foraged nettle.

Standing here surrounded by cheese of all hues and provenance I’m reminded of that famous passage in Le Ventre de Paris ( The Belly of Paris ) by one of my favorite writers, Émile Zola. The novel is set in Les Halles, the central food market that was demolished in 1971 and replaced by a Westfield mall. About three-quarters of the way into the book Zola orchestrates the contents of Madame Lecoeur’s cheese storeroom into an olfactory symphony.

It was the camembert they could smell. This cheese, with its gamy odour, had overpowered the milder smells of the marolles and the limbourg; its power was remarkable. Every now and then, however, a slight whiff, a flute-like note, came from the parmesan, while the bries came into play with their soft, musty smell, the gentle sound, so to speak, of a damp tambourine. The livarot launched into an overwhelming reprise, and the géromé kept up the symphony with a sustained high note. Article continues after advertisement Remove Ads

Cheese is a cheese is a cheese.

The story goes like this. Cheese is a fermented product created from milk, salt, rennet and a cast of powerful—albeit invisible to us—microbes. With a type such as emmental, cheesewrights depend on a particular bacteria to consume the lactic acid and release carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide bubbles are trapped in the curd and form “eyes.” Once upon a time these organisms were introduced to the milk via splinters of hay or grass. Over the past half-century however, as cheesemaking became a more hygiene-regulated procedure, makers found their emmental was failing to produce eyes. This resulted in what’s called a blind cheese, and emmental minus its signature holes is considered substandard.

Cheesewrights. Playwrights. I like those “wright” words for makers and builders of things. Turn out cheese. Shape a play. Overheard conversations on the bus. Snapshots of people briefly encountered. As a playwright I source my ingredients from routine as well as random places. A while ago I accompanied a friend to an upmarket delicatessen in an upmarket district of London. When I asked the specialist cheesemonger, a lanky thirty-something with hair the color of gravel, if they had any sage derby, he responded with a barely suppressed shudder. “It’s flavor-added and we don’t stock that kind of cheese,” he said, as he ushered us out of the shop. Was he worried the mere mention of a “flavor-added” cheese would pollute his snooty business? Who knows, but one day I’ll put him in a script and get my revenge.

A poet’s hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

W.H. Auden had been living in the Big Apple for years when he penned that stanza. Nevertheless I reckon the “valley cheese” he had in mind was most likely an English one.

I like the English classics: sage derby, lancashire, stilton, wensleydale. Regional recipes now spread far and wide, e.g. my fridge contains a pack of sage derby from Victoria’s Gippsland. It’s a smooth, pleasantly fragrant cheese, goes well with baked pears and celeriac, but it doesn’t taste like the sage derbies of my English growing-up. Is that the different terroir? Or is it more about the nature of memory? (Can you use “terroir” for cheese, or does it only apply to wine?)

“That’s it—cheese! We’ll go somewhere where there’s cheese!” exclaims inventor Wallace in the animated short A Grand Day Out . And off they rocket to the moon, because as everyone knows, the moon is made of cheese. Whenever I buy wensleydale, which I do quite often, I have that line echoing in my head. Cheese features regularly in the Wallace and Gromit films; the cartoon characters’ enthusiasm for wensleydale is credited with boosting sales of the Yorkshire specialty. And they’re in good company. T.S. Eliot dubbed wensleydale the Mozart of cheese. For George Orwell it was outclassed only by stilton.

Although the label “Golden Age” is enough to make any dish sound appetizing, Dutch cooking is hardly one of the world’s celebrated cuisines. One food writer lamented at length the terrible influence of the potato on the nation’s culinary arts. So what brought about such food-focused visual art?

According to nineteenth-century French critic Alfred Michiels, it was the weather. A cold, ungenial climate that sent people scurrying indoors fostered the development of Dutch and Flemish still-life painting.

Art historian Julie Berger Hochstrasser gives a rather different explanation:

The genesis of still-life painting as an independent genre coincides in time and place with a key period in the birth of consumer society. In the seventeenth century, the United Provinces of the Netherlands achieved a position of primacy in global trade that brought unprecedented wealth to Holland.

In the hierarchy of painterly subject matter, biblical and mythological scenes were the most prestigious. Until still lifes demoted the Holy Family and replaced them with flowers, fish, and yes, cheese. A mainstay of the agrarian economy and a food that carried no obvious religious meaning.

Was there cheese at the Last Supper? And if there was, what kind of cheese did Jesus and his disciples enjoy? Labneh? Haloumi? Ewes’-milk feta? Maybe Turkish lor—a cheese made from leftover whey that pairs brilliantly with sour cherry jam.

Which brings me to my next question: Who invented cheese?

Without refrigeration milk soon spoils. At some point millennia ago herders worked out how to convert their milk into cheese, a more stable source of nourishment. The cheeses that evolved in various locations—the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere—were shaped by the physical and cultural characteristics of their particular environments.

Adding flavorings to cheese is a very old practice. Herbs, peppercorns, spices, even weeds. Sage derby is a semi-hard English cheese with a subtle, slightly grassy flavor. Its green marbling comes from sage, sometimes supplemented with spinach juice, which is added to the curds during the making (rather than the aging) process. First produced in the seventeenth century and initially only for festive occasions, sage was thought to aid digestion and temper anxiety. There are detailed instructions for making it in the gloriously titled 1728 tome The Country Housewife and Lady’s Director in the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm .

From farmhouse to factory, craft to commerce. On dairy holdings men took care of the outside tasks while wives did the inside labor—chores, children, cheese-making. Knowledge passed down the generations, from mothers to daughters…until around the middle of the nineteenth century when the profit potential of cheese became apparent. Large-scale manufacturing began, and surprise, surprise, it became a male-dominated industry.

Masters of the Golden Age—does that collective noun include women? It should because there were a number of successful female artists in the Low Countries during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Rachel Ruysch, Maria van Oosterwijck, Clara Peeters—and others. Of those painters only Clara Peeters did cheese. As far as I know. Still Life with Cheeses, Artichoke, and Cherries from 1625 is my favorite. As well as cheese (and biscuits), artichokes were one of Clara Peeters’s trademarks. So too, reflected self-portraits that you need a magnifying glass to spot.

Biographical information about Clara Peeters is scarce and somewhat speculative. She may have been born in Antwerp around 1594. Or not. Probably was. In any case, she was one of the pioneers of still-life painting in the Netherlands. In the meticulous detail of her cheeses, I see landscapes. Knife cuts; cracks. A plugged hole left by the taster’s scoop. Darkening edges; tiny blooms of mold. Dutch engineers taming the North Sea and draining the land to turn a soggy backwater into a dairy powerhouse.

It would be easy to assume no one went hungry during this period of plenty. Not so. Substantial sections of the population were living in poverty with a monotonous and wholly inadequate diet.

Twentieth-century artists took a more oblique approach to the art-reality nexus than their predecessors. René Magritte put a framed picture of a wedge of brie under a glass dome and declared: Ceci est un morceau de fromage —“this is a piece of cheese.” Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein adopted Swiss cheese as a recurrent motif. Cheese Head was a billboard poster created for a 1978 exhibition, and Jobs…Not Cheese! was a critique of Ronald Reagan’s apocryphal “let them eat cheese” statement. Reagan enacted a program to offload the government’s surplus—and frequently moldy—processed cheese onto welfare recipients.

Imagine your cheese grater almost two meters high—that’s Mona Hatoum’s Grater Divide from 2002. With the change of scale, an everyday kitchen utensil is recast as something alien. Something sharp and sinister. Then there’s Rodin’s The Kiss rendered life-size in cheddar. Yes, really. It was made for a 2015 competition aimed at raising money for UK museums and galleries.

And once upon a time it was a mysterious substance. An untrustworthy product, the preserve of dairymaids and cheese-wives, i.e. uneducated women. An unsettling entity within which lurked the stuff of nightmares. So went the thinking of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In The Cheese and the Worms Carlo Ginzburg digs deep into archival records to give us the worldview of a sixteenth-century miller who believed that the cosmos and its inhabitants were created from rotting cheese. All was chaos “thrashed by the water of the sea like foam, and it curdled like a cheese, from which later great multitudes of worms were born.”

Is cheese alive? (Short answer: yes.) An odd question to ask now perhaps, but back then it would have been easy to believe that there was something animate, something otherworldly about cheese. A notion that persisted well into the seventeenth century when polymath Margaret Cavendish wrote in her Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy that “such insects, as Maggots, and several sorts of Worms and Flies, and the like, which have no Generator of their own kind, but are bred out of Cheese, Earth and Dung, &c.”

Cheese disappeared after about 1625. Not from the Dutch pantry, but from still-life paintings. Displaced by goods gathered from further afield. Porcelain and pineapples. Tropical birds. Items unfamiliar to European eyes. In 1596 Dutch ships reached the Indonesian archipelago. Shortly thereafter they went west to the Americas. The elaborate, over-the-top still lifes from the later seventeenth century are full of the fruits of empire, and one way to read these paintings is as a kind of map.

From homegrown comforts to the realities of colonialism. The specter of slavery hovers over this bounty.

Julie Berger Hochstrasser again:

Just what and how much did the buyers, owners, and viewers of these paintings in their time know of the true stories of the acquisition of these many commodities assembled, mute but splendid, in Dutch still life?

A grape withers and falls from the bunch. A caterpillar munches a leaf. Pockmarks appear on a hunk of edam. Early interpretations of still lifes posited them as warnings. The moral danger of luxury or gluttonous excess. Later commentators spotlight the economic backstory. These lavish spreads celebrate independence and the newly proclaimed Dutch Republic’s material prosperity.

Truth is, there are many possible meanings.

When gorgonzola became Google Scholar it wasn’t the only cheese to flip. Gouda became Buddha. Word autocorrects hijack my typing and the resulting translations read like a Dada poem someone wearing a birdcage might have performed in Zürich circa 1918.

Google Scholar Buddha Important fonts (imported fontina) Stand alone (stilton) Cheese crackers

For a long time female artists were missing from histories of Dada. Or mentioned only as lovers and helpers. Hannah Höch, one of the few recognized by the movement, was dismissed in a male colleague’s memoir-cum-chronology as a lightweight, the girl who provided the catering, “Sandwiches, beer and coffee.” Cut with the Kitchen Knife is probably Hannah Höch’s best known photomontage. So yes, put her in the kitchen shaving cheese—I’m picturing a creamy, raw-milk tilsit or maybe gruyere—then note the work’s full title, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany , and we’re no longer in the kitchen composing sandwiches. We’re looking at a forceful, kaleidoscopic vision of German society.

Marcel Duchamp may have coined the term ready-mades, but he wasn’t the first to reposition the materials of everyday life as art objects. A year before he devised his first readymade, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven a.k.a. the Baroness showed hers. And in 1917 when Duchamp submitted his now famous Fountain, she gave us God, a plumbing U-bend as sculpture. A big fuck you to the art establishment and to the powers that be.

Throw another question at Google: What’s the most widely produced cheese?

Cheddar. At least thirteen countries churn out their own.

How about processed cheese—what’s the deal there?

Kraft developed its processed cheddar in the United States and launched it in Australia in 1925. Their “cheese-like substance” had a lengthy shelf life and could be stored without refrigeration. The arrival of a local competitor, Maxam Cheese, three years later, sparked the ire of the Kraft Walker Company and a fiery and protracted legal battle ensued.

What art—if any—might be inspired by mass produced cheese? Kraft Singles instead of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans ? Or something agit-prop-y and satirical in the style of Barbara Kruger’s slogans? “Eat The Big Cheeses!” in Futura Bold?

A long time ago, I sat in a theater with half a dozen other audience members, listened to an audioscape of industrial noise and watched a woman take an hour to peel an apple. I recall an untouched slab of cheese on a side table. I checked my watch. What would the performer do if I walked on stage and helped myself to a snack? Was it a plastic prop or the real article? Checked my watch again. Was the artist trying to say something about gendered labor? Capitalism? Original sin? Was it some sort of homage to Marina Abramović? Were the apple and cheese a reference to the verisimilitude of traditional still life? One positive thing I can say about the experience, is that instead of following the boringly predictable—but then fashionable—route and appearing naked, apple-woman remained fully clothed throughout.

Could the tart in Clara Peeters’s still life with a tart be a cheesy one?

Cheese and onion pie.

Cauliflower cheese.

Matar paneer.

Macaroni cheese.

Liptauer from Slovakia.

New York cheesecake.

Russian paskha.

New Zealand’s famous—or infamous—cheese rolls.

Cookery books of the past were written for women who knew what was what. Their recipes hands-on, narrative rather than prescriptive.

I read somewhere—at least I think I did—the argument that still-life paintings have no narrative. They’re purely description, the visual equivalent of literary exposition.

I have to disagree with that.

I love the chiaroscuro of those Dutch and Flemish canvases. I love their sensuality. When I look at them I can smell butter, nutmeg, a faint rasping of citrus. But most of all I love their drama. The table is set, food is offered, householders and guests partake and depart. The playwright in me conjures up an ensemble of players: the cooks and kitchen hands, the teenage servant girls who sweep up the crumbs, the provedores and market gardeners who supply the vegetables, the late-season plums, the cheese. Of course, the cheese. I concoct bios and dialogue, dream up scenarios that speak of intimate connections, of simmering tensions and treacherous acts. Mouth-wateringly beautiful in themselves, those still-life paintings are also trapdoors to the beguiling, candlelit universe of Jacobean theater.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales has no still-life cheese on display and nothing by Clara Peeters, but they do have Maria van Oosterwijck’s Flowers and Grapes Hanging from a Ring . It’s apparently the earliest painting by a female artist in their collection.

I didn’t know much about cheese, but in the course of researching this essay I’ve become a gleaner of thin-sliced facts and maybe-facts. From a Queensland dairy firm’s plan to make a monster cheese for the 1905 Brisbane Show to the origin myth of camembert. From ancient, plant-derived coagulants to that perfect wensleydale savored by a couple of spies in Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana .

And last month it was German walnut. My cheese of choice. This week it’s a Dutch artisan gouda, dusky orange in color, twenty-four months matured. I discovered it browsing the selection at that Sydney deli counter. Much as I want to try it however, at sixty-one dollars ninety-nine a kilo, I buy only a very small piece. I might grate it over baked zucchini with a pinch of mace, or over pasta instead of my usual grana padano, or…or I might just go home, watch trash TV, eat hot, bubbling gouda, glued to Polish rye bread with a dab of mustard, and sip a glass or two of carefully chosen mellow rioja.

_____________________________________

Noëlle Janaczewska

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The Science Behind Your Cheese

The food is not just a tasty snack—it’s an ecosystem

Ute Eberle, Knowable Magazine

There are cheeses with fuzzy rinds such as Camembert, and ones marbled with blue veins such as Cabrales, which ripens for months in mountain caves in northern Spain.

Yet almost all of the world’s thousand-odd kinds of cheese start the same, as a white, rubbery lump of curd.

How do we get from that uniform blandness to this cornucopia? The answer revolves around microbes . Cheese teems with bacteria, yeasts and molds. “More than 100 different microbial species can easily be found in a single cheese type,” says Baltasar Mayo, a senior researcher at the Dairy Research Institute of Asturias in Spain. In other words: Cheese isn’t just a snack, it’s an ecosystem. Every slice contains billions of microbes — and they are what makes cheeses distinctive and delicious.

People have made cheese since the late Stone Age , but only recently have scientists begun to study its microbial nature and learn about the deadly skirmishes, peaceful alliances and beneficial collaborations that happen between the organisms that call cheese home.

To find out what bacteria and fungi are present in cheese and where they come from, scientists sample cheeses from all over the world and extract the DNA they contain. By matching the DNA to genes in existing databases, they can identify which organisms are present in the cheese. “The way we do that is sort of like microbial CSI, you know, when they go out to a crime scene investigation, but in this case we are looking at what microbes are there,” Ben Wolfe, a microbial ecologist at Tufts University, likes to say.

Early on, that search yielded surprises. For example, cheesemakers often add starter cultures of beneficial bacteria to freshly formed curds to help a cheese on its way. Yet when Wolfe’s group and others examined ripened cheeses, they found that the microbial mixes — microbiomes — of the cheeses showed only a passing resemblance to those cultures. Often, more than half of the bacteria present were microbial “strangers” that had not been in the starter culture. Where did they come from?

Many of these microbes turned out to be old acquaintances, but ones we usually know from places other than cheese. Take Brachybacterium , a microbe present in Gruyère, which is more commonly found in soil, seawater and chicken litter (and perhaps even an Etruscan tomb). Or bacteria of the genus Halomonas , which are usually associated with salt ponds and marine environments.

Then there’s Brevibacterium linens , a bacterium that has been identified as a central contributor to the stinkiness of Limburger. When not on cheese, it can often be found in damp areas of our skin such as between our toes. B. linens also adds characteristic notes to the odor of sweat. So when we say that dirty feet smell “cheesy,” there’s truth to it: The same organisms are involved. In fact, as Wolfe once pointed out , the bacteria and fungi on feet and cheese “look pretty much the same.” (An artist in Ireland demonstrated this some years ago by culturing cheeses with organisms plucked from people’s bodies.)

Initially, researchers were dumbfounded by how some of these microbes ended up on and in cheese. Yet, as they sampled the environment of cheesemaking facilities, a picture began to emerge. The milk of cows (or goats or sheep) contains some microbes from the get-go. But many more are picked up during the milking and cheesemaking process. Soil bacteria lurking in a stable’s straw bedding might attach themselves to the teats of a cow and end up in the milking pail, for example. Skin bacteria fall into the milk from the hand of the milker or get transferred by the knife that cuts the curd. Other microbes enter the milk from the storage tank or simply drift down off the walls of the dairy facility.

Some microorganisms are probably brought in from surprisingly far away. Wolfe and other researchers now suspect that marine microbes such as Halomonas get to the cheese via the sea salt in the brine that cheesemakers use to wash down their cheeses.

A simple, fresh white cheese like petit-suisse from Normandy might mostly contain microbes of a single species or two. But in long-ripened cheeses such as Roquefort, researchers have detected hundreds of different kinds of bacteria and fungi. In some cheeses, more than 400 different kinds have been found, says Mayo, who has investigated microbial interactions in the cheese ecosystem. Furthermore, by repeatedly testing, scientists have observed that there can be a sequence of microbial settlements whose rise and fall can rival that of empires.

Consider Bethlehem, a raw milk cheese made by Benedictine nuns in the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut. Between the day it gets made (or “born,” as cheesemakers say) to when it’s fully ripe about a month later, Bethlehem changes from a rubbery, smooth disk to one with a dusty white rind sprouting tiny fungal hair, and eventually to a darkly mottled surface. If you were to look with a strong microscope, you could watch as the initially smooth rind becomes a rugged, pocketed terrain so densely packed with organisms that they form biofilms similar to the microbial mats around bathroom drains. A single gram of rind from a fully ripened cheese might contain a good 10 billion bacteria, yeasts and other fungi.

But the process usually starts simply. Typically, the first microbial settlers in milk are lactic acid bacteria (LABs). These LABs feed on lactose, the sugar in the milk, and as their name implies, they produce acid from it. The increasing acidity causes the milk to sour, making it inhospitable for many other microbes. That includes potential pathogens such as Escherichia coli , says Paul Cotter, a microbiologist at the Teagasc Food Research Centre in Ireland who wrote about the microbiology of cheese and other foods in the 2022 Annual Review of Food Science and Technology .

However, a select few microorganisms can abide this acid environment, among them certain yeasts such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast). These microbes move into the souring milk and feed on the lactic acid that LABs produce. In doing so, they neutralize the acidity, eventually allowing other bacteria such as B. linens to join the cheesemaking party.

As the various species settle in, territorial struggles can ensue. A study in 2020 that looked at 55 artisanal Irish cheeses found that almost one in three cheese microbes possessed genes needed to produce “weapons” — chemical compounds that kill off rivals. At this point it isn’t clear if and how many of these genes are switched on, says Cotter, who was involved in the project. (Should these compounds be potent enough, he hopes they might one day become sources for new antibiotics.)

But cheese microbes also cooperate. For example, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts that eat the lactic acid produced by the LABs return the favor by manufacturing vitamins and other compounds that the LABs need. In a different sort of cooperation, threadlike fungal filaments can act as “roads” for surface bacteria to travel deep into the interior of a cheese, Wolfe’s team has found.

By now you might have started to suspect: Cheese is fundamentally about decomposition. Like microbes on a rotten log in the woods, the bacteria and fungi in cheese break down their environment — in this case, the milk fats and proteins. This makes cheeses creamy and gives them flavor.

Mother Noella Marcellino, a longtime Benedictine cheesemaker at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, put it this way in a 2021 interview with Slow Food: “Cheese shows us what goodness can come from decay. Humans don’t want to look at death, because it means separation and the end of a cycle. But it’s also the start of something new. Decomposition creates this wonderful aroma and taste of cheese while evoking a promise of life beyond death.”

Exactly how the microbes build flavor is still being investigated. “It’s much less understood,” says Mayo. But a few things already stand out. Lactic acid bacteria, for example, produce volatile compounds called acetoin and diacetyl that can also be found in butter and accordingly give cheeses a rich, buttery taste. A yeast called Geotrichum candidum brings forth a blend of alcohols, fatty acids and other compounds that impart the moldy yet fruity aroma characteristic of cheeses such as Brie or Camembert. Then there’s butyric acid, which smells rancid on its own but enriches the aroma of Parmesan, and volatile sulfur compounds whose cooked-cabbage smell blends into the flavor profile of many mold-ripened cheeses like Camembert. “Different strains of microbe can produce different taste components,” says Cotter.

All a cheesemaker does is set the right conditions for the “rot” of the milk. “Different bacteria and fungi thrive at different temperatures and different humidity levels, so every step along the way introduces variety and nuance,” says Julia Pringle, a microbiologist at the artisan Vermont cheesemaker Jasper Hill Farm. If a cheesemaker heats the milk to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, for example, only heat-loving bacteria like Streptococcus thermophilus will survive — perfect for making cheeses like mozzarella.

Cutting the curd into large chunks means that it will retain a fair amount of moisture, which will lead to a softer cheese like Camembert. On the other hand, small cubes of curd drain better, resulting in a drier curd — something you want for, say, a cheddar.

Storing the young cheese at warmer or cooler temperatures will again encourage some microbes and inhibit others, as does the amount of salt that is added. So when cheesemakers wash their ripening rounds with brine, it not only imparts seasoning but also promotes colonies of salt-loving bacteria like B. linens that promptly create a specific kind of rind: “orangey, a bit sticky, and kind of funky,” says Pringle.

Even the tiniest changes in how a cheese is handled can alter its microbiome, and thus the cheese itself, cheesemakers say. Switch on the air exchanger in the ripening room by mistake so that more oxygen flows around the cheese and suddenly molds will sprout that haven’t been there before.

But surprisingly, as long as the conditions remain the same, the same communities of microbes will show up again and again, researchers have found. Put differently: The same microbes can be found almost everywhere. If a cheesemaker sticks to the recipe for a Camembert — always heats the milk to the relevant temperature, cuts the curd to the right size, ripens the cheese at the appropriate temperature and moisture level — the same species will flourish and an almost identical kind of Camembert will develop, whether it’s on a farm in Normandy, in a cheesemaker’s cave in Vermont or in a steel-clad dairy factory in Wisconsin.

Some cheesemakers had speculated that cheese was like wine, which famously has a terroir — that is, a specific taste that is tied to its geography and is rooted in the vineyard’s microclimate and soil. But apart from subtle nuances, if everything goes well in production, the same cheese type always tastes the same no matter where or when it’s made, says Mayo.

By now, some microbes have been making cheese for people for so long that they have become — in the words of microbiologist Vincent Somerville at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland — “domesticated.” Somerville studies genomic changes in cheese starter cultures used in his country. In Switzerland, cheesemakers traditionally hold back part of the whey from a batch of cheese to use again when making the next one. It’s called backslopping, “and some starter cultures have been continuously backslopped for months, years, and even centuries,” says Somerville. During that time, the backslopped microbes have lost genes that are no longer useful for them in their specialized dairy environment, such as some genes needed to metabolize carbohydrates other than lactose, the only sugar found in milk.

But not only has cheesemaking become tamer over time, it is also cleaner than it used to be — and this has had consequences for its ecosystem. These days, many cows are milked by machines and the milk is siphoned directly into the closed systems of hermetically sealed, ultra-filtered storage tanks, protected from the steady rain of microbes from hay, humans and walls that settled on the milk in more traditional times.

Often the milk is pasteurized, too — that is, briefly heated to high temperatures to kill the bacteria that come naturally with it. Then, they’re replaced with standardized starter cultures.

All of this has made cheesemaking more controlled. But alas, it also means that there’s less diversity of microbes in our cheeses. Many of our cheddars, provolones and Camemberts, once wildly proliferating microbial meadows, have become more like manicured lawns. And because every microbe contributes its own signature mix of chemical compounds to a cheese, less diversity also means less flavor — a big loss.

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According to the USDA, the average American consumes 7.5 pounds of Cheddar each year. Almost all of that is American Cheddar--hardly the same as traditional British Cheddar. Traditional Cheddar is aged in cloth at a relatively high temperature and gains its yellow color from bacteria that interact with the unpasteurized milk. American Cheddar is shrink-wrapped, aged at room temperature, and is often dyed orange to cover up the fact that it is always made with pasteurized milk. Even the best American Cheddar is not as good as 'real' Cheddar, but we generally are not even eating that. Instead, we eat mutated, disfigured, diluted Cheddar in the form of Cheez Whiz, Kraft American Cheese singles, Velveeta, cheese spread, Scooby Doo Cheese Flavored Crackers, etc. We Americans have many things to be proud of. Cheese is not one of them.

I was walking about aimlessly through Costco with a gift card from my mother and an empty shopping cart, trying to decide what it is that I should buy. I had fifty dollars to spend on groceries, but I never spend fifty dollars on groceries. I can spend $85 on a dinner date, but can't justify buying fresh produce because cans are so much cheaper. Wandering down the colossal aisles and not finding any use for eight-pound cans of refried beans or two-gallon tubs of mayonnaise, I stumbled upon a beautiful idea: cheese. I entered the refrigerator section and was confronted by seemingly endless glass doors that open to shelves of cheese. Here, next to the eggs and milk, are the basic cheeses. I grabbed a two pound block of cheddar, extra sharp of course, contemplated the Swiss, put a six-pound cube of Mozzarella into my cart, noticed but didn't consider the processed American cheese, picked up the Swiss and look at it for a while, then with my other hand grabbed some Colby Jack. Eventually, I put the Swiss back, deciding that the Cheddar, Colby, and Mozzarella would be enough. I still was only about half way to the fifty-dollar mark, I realized, and so I headed towards the deli section. They keep the good cheeses there: Gouda, fresh Mozzarella, Edam, Blue, Brie, Queso Fresco, Feta, Ricotta. I got a nicely sized triangle of Gouda, a wheel of Brie, and a ball of fresh Mozzarella. The Feta looks intriguing, but it is difficult to eat without salad and I had no money left for salad ingredients. I took my cartful of cheese (and some salami) up to the registers at the front and waited through an enormous line. When I finally got to the register, the cashier looked at me and asked, "So you like cheese, huh?" I just stared back at her coldly and acted like I didn't hear her. Her question was full of condescension, and no one is allowed to criticize my cheese.

All cheese is made in basically three steps: producing curd, concentrating curd, and ripening curd. There are a couple exceptions to this rule, mainly Ricotta, Petite Suisse, and the other unripened cheeses that skip step three. A starter culture is added to the milk and the milk is heated. When rennet, a product found on the inside lining of sheep and other animals' stomachs, is added, the milk begins to coagulate and form curds. The curd is allowed to sit for a while before concentration begins. Concentration is achieved in a variety of ways, including but not limited to cooking, pressing, and salting. After the curd has been concentrated, the ripening process begins in a cool, humid room. Ripening is basically just a process of controlled spoilage. The bacteria added earlier continues to interact with the curd, giving cheese is flavor, texture, and consistency. Now that I've told you the steps, go make your own cheese. What? I wasn't specific enough? Well, that's because it's impossible to be more specific than this while talking about all cheeses at once. Each step of the process varies for different types of cheese. Two remarkably different cheeses can share all the same ingredients, but become different only because different production processes.

I may sound condescending towards American cheese. If so, that's because I think American cheese is shit. Don't get me wrong, I am American and realize that I eat the same shitty cheese that I criticize. I love Scooby Doo Cheddar Flavored Crackers. I'm not trying to say I'm better than anyone. I just want to say that I realize that most American cheese is not real cheese.

The United States Department of Agriculture predicts that over 13.6 million metric tons of cheese will be produced this year, up from just under 13 million in 2003. A number like 13.6 million metric tons can be difficult to comprehend, but maybe this will help: a typical elephant weighs about five metric tons. So, the weight of cheese expected to be produced this year is roughly equal to the weight of an army of 2.7 million elephants. The United States will produce just over 30% of this, around 4.15 million metric tons. The average price of a metric ton of Cheddar cheese in the U.S. in 2003 was almost exactly $3,000. You may be asking yourself, where is all this cheese going? You're eating it. Only 58 metric tons will be exported in 2005. The other 4.1 million will be consumed by Americans. The average American consumed 21.8 pounds of cheese in 2003, up 248% from the average consumption of 8.8 pounds per person in 1970. The 2003 consumption rate breaks down to a full ounce each day, representing a daily intake of 93.7 calories or 0.627 servings. As I may have mentioned earlier, Cheddar leads the cheeses in amount of average yearly consumption by Americans at 7.5 pounds. Mozarella is a close second at 7.48 pounds per year. Other than those two, no specific type of cheese (unless you consider processed cheese as a type of cheese) is consumed at an average rate of more than a pound per year.

Do you remember the Sunday School story of David and Goliath? Do you remember what David's father, Jesse, had the little shepherd David bring to the Israelite army who was facing the Philistines? You guessed it--cheese. Jesse told David before he left home, "And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their pledge." He also sent some corn and bread along. When David arrived, he found that a champion warrior for the Philistines, Goliath, had been challenging the Israeli army to send out a man to fight him for forty days, but no one was willing to go. David volunteered and went out to face the giant warrior without any armor. Everyone thought it was a joke at first, but then David managed to slay Goliath with a stone and a sling. People typically give credit for the miraculous victory to God, but I think it might have been the cheese. The main cheese produced in Israel today is Lebbene, a sheep's milk cheese often shaped into little balls and enjoyed throughout the Middle East. There has to be a link here. A small shepherd boy takes cheese to the army and kills a giant with a small, round stone three thousand years ago, and today his descendents eat sheep cheese in similarly shaped balls.

Cheese Racing is a rather unconventional sport that jumped onto the scene in 1997. Since its founding in the United Kingdom by some drunken campers, it has become an underground phenomenon. Like most sports, Cheese Racing is complex and cannot be simplified into a brief description, but here is my feeble attempt: each competitor places his or her Kraft singles cheese, still in the plastic wrap, on the barbeque at exactly the same time. No touching or moving of the cheese after this point is allowed until the conclusion of the race. The racer owning the first cheese wrapper to fully inflate is the winner. If there is a draw, a second match must occur between the two competitors who tied. The pioneers of this sport were creative/intelligent/bored enough to publish their rulebook on their web site. They also offer a few helpful tips such as to always use regular Kraft American Cheese slices, not generic or low-fat varieties. Although the British generally kick our asses when it comes to making cheese, in this particular area, an American cheese is clearly the best. Also, don't have the barbeque too hot. There should be hot coals, no flames. After all, we're trying to inflate the cheese pouches here, not melt them. Since their original cheese race, fans of the sport have joined in around the world. Every weekend, there are people racing cheese on their backyard barbeques. Others have even documented their own cheese racing adventures on the Internet as well. Interested in cheese racing yourself? Well, first you need to get the proper apparel. You can get an official Cheese Racing thong for only $9.99 or a trucker cap for $12.99 online. They have other apparel available too, but I personally recommend just the thong and trucker cap. Then, ask your buddies if they know any cheese racers in the area. Chances are that you probably already know someone who knows someone who is a cheese racer. Get a big group together, grab some cheese and a barbeque grill and go have some fun. Don't forget the thong and trucker cap.

The Muenster cheese family offers a good example of the way in which cheeses evolve as they pass through different regions. American Muenster cheese does not at all resemble its French predecessor. In Alsace, if you were to go into a local cheese shop and ask for Munster, you would be given a seven-inch wheel, just over an inch thick, of soft, creamy, straw-colored cow's milk cheese with a strong beefy and nutty flavor, encased in a dry, russet-colored rind. The Munster you're given will have a smell of "rotting fruits and vegetables and barnyard animals" because of the ingredients used to wash its rind in the third stage of production, but is still bursting with a beautiful flavor that is described as by Jenkins as a "triumph of cheese making." Munster was originally produced in monasteries (the name Munster is a derivation of monastère ) but is now produced by artisans all throughout the Alsace region. The Germans quickly took the name of the cheese and added an umlaut to it to make it German, but Münster is, at best, a sloppy imitation of the French original. Münster is produced by factories rather than artisans. Both the size and flavor of the cheese reflects this switch. Münster is produced in wheels twice as tall and bigger around, weighing about six pounds each. The benefits of producing larger wheels are all economical: more actual cheese is produced with fewer ingredients and man-hours. But, what is gained economically is lost in taste. The larger wheels are not able to absorb as much of the flavor of the rind washing because there is less rind and more cheese. As a result, Münster is considerably milder and barely resembles its predecessor. The Americans took the imitation/adaptation/mutation even further. They dropped the umlaut, added an e , and altered the production process so much that there is almost nothing in common between Muenster and Munster except that both are made from cow's milk. American Muenster is ripened in loaves with paprika exteriors instead of the wheels and rinds used to make its predecessors. The interior is a creamy white instead of straw-colored; the only color in Muenster is the light orange exterior caused by the paprika. Obviously, because it has no rind, it cannot be rind washed and, therefore, does not have any of the beefy and nutty flavor that the original is known for. In fact, American Muenster is best known for its bland taste. It is commonly used as a sandwich cheese or in recipes in which melted cheese that will not add too much flavor is called for.

I woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks ago with a thought that I didn't want to forget. I grabbed the notebook and pen laying next to my bed (precisely for this reason), scribbled something, and then went back to sleep. The next evening, I came home from work and saw that I had written something on the notebook. It read: "Write like a cheese." I thought about that for a while, and although I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it, came to the conclusion that I was probably trying to tell myself to model my essay--this essay--after a type of cheese. I thought of the options. I could make it like Cheddar, solid, condensed, and blandly uniform; like Swiss, solid in areas but containing big holes; like Brie, with a thick rind but a soft, smooth interior; or even like American processed cheese singles, a collection of separate pieces each encased in cellophane wrapping. I decided on crumbled Feta, "a young, crumbly sheep's-milk cheese that is pickled in brine."

Ever wonder why Packers fans are called cheeseheads? I had always just assumed that the team's name was somehow connected with cheese, but I was wrong. In fact, the Packers were not associated with cheese at all throughout the first fifty years of their history. The team was established in 1919 and sponsored by the Indian Packing Company, the employer of Curly Lambeau, one of the founders. As a thank you for the sponsorship, the team adopted the name of Packers and remained closely associated with the Indian Packing Company throughout its early existence. The huge success they achieved in their first years allowed the team to become a franchise of the newly formed National Football League in 1921. The Green Bay Packers went on to become one of America's most famed underdogs. Their Superbowl victories in 1967 and 1968 prompted resentment among Chicago football fans who began calling the Green Bay fans cheeseheads to ridicule their country bumpkin-ness. A clever capitalist and Packer fan began producing plastic cheeseheads in 1987 and by doing so, turned the insult into a matter of pride. Now, if you were to travel to Lambeau Field on an autumn Sunday, you'd be likely to find thousands of green and yellow-clad fans topped with a plastic cheesehead. You can purchase your own official cheesehead for only $20 from Foamation, the company that has been producing them from the start. There are also several variations available including the Patriotic Cheesehead Hat, the Cheesehead Cowboy Hat, and, of course, the Cheesehead Sombrero.

I was sixteen years old and vacationing with my family in Maui. We were on the patio at Corelli's just after sunset, celebrating the upcoming wedding of my cousin-in-law's brother. The ocean and sky still had a few lingering hints of red, but the darkness of the night was taking over. The waves hit the beach with a monotonous thud that many find relaxing, but that has always been agitating to me (and my grandfather and father). Still, the fragrant air and company of my large family spread over two tables on this Hawaiian night was pleasant as the waiter came around with the appetizer menus. I immediately saw Mozzarella Tomato Salad and knew that's what I was getting. My cousin tried to persuade me to get the clams or oysters, "They're great over here," but I could not resist the cheese, even though the simple appetizer that I always make at home was there twenty dollars. The mozzarella and tomato came served on a large white plate, alternating slices of beautiful red tomato and soft white cheese. A toothpick was speared through the middle, as though to look like an afterthought, but I saw deliberateness in the way it was positioned. The splash of olive oil that is dropped on has the same appearance of organized randomness. The plate in front of me was so beautiful, a part of me wanted to just leave it there to look at. But, my mouth overcame my eyes, and I cut a quarter out as neatly as I could. The tomato and olive oil were wonderful, but outdone by the soft, fresh mozzarella that is beyond comparison. I finished the appetizer and then my entree and dessert, but years later, I cannot even remember what they were or who was at the dinner. I'll remember the taste of that perfect cheese forever.

"Say cheese." "Cheese!" Click. Why?

There is a school of thought that maintains that Homer's Odyssey , like the Iliad , is actually the telling of a historical event, not a fictional story. Like the Iliad , the Odyssey was composed by Homer hundreds of years after the events he was describing took place. In those years between Odysseus' famous voyage and Homer's composition, the story was maintained through an oral storytelling tradition that often elaborated and exaggerated events. By the time Homer wrote his epic, Odysseus' journey through the Mediterranean had acquired several supernatural characteristics. According to this line of thinking, the Island of Polyphemus was actually Sicily and the Cyclops were actually Sicilians. This conclusion was reached by analyzing geographical landmarks mentioned in the tale. It is also thought that the idea of the Cyclops, or race of men with one eye, was originally a race of men with one eyebrow. The unibrowed Sicilians had transformed into Cyclops in between Odysseus' journey and Homer's telling of it. According to the Odyssey then, Sicilians have been making cheese for a long time. When Odysseus entered Polyphemus' cave, he observed that, "So we entered the cave and gazed in wonder at all things there. The crates were laden with cheeses, and the pens were crowded with lambs and kids." Odysseus' men suggested taking that cheese they saw on the racks along with the penned lambs and sheep, but Odysseus chose to behave honorably and wait for Polyphemus to return home and offer him some of the cheese and lambs as gifts. Polyphemus, upon returning home, did not act as honorably. Instead of giving the men gifts, he locked them in his cave. Odysseus quickly thought up an ingenious plan to escape the cave by blinding the Cyclops and riding out tied to the bellies of the sheep, but he and his men were not able to take any of the cheese with them. The Cyclops' Sicilian descendents produce two main cheeses today: Ricotta Salata and Pecorino Siciliano. Both of these cheeses are produced from sheep's milk, just as Polyphemus' cheese was back in the days of Odysseus.

When Baxter told Ron Burgundy that he had eaten an entire wheel of cheese and pooped in the refrigerator, the legendary anchorman responded, "I'm not even mad. That's amazing." When I told my manager Jen that I ate an entire wheel of Brie in less than a day, she responded, "Wow, that sounds like a digestive nightmare."

I've never tasted any cheese produced outside of North America. I drink French wine and German beer, smoked Turkish cigarettes for a while, and make Russian caviar a part of my diet as often as possible. And I love cheese. I love cheese enough to write a long essay about it. So, why have I (and I'm assuming most of you who read this) never tasted the great European cheeses that I am writing about? The government. The FDA has strict guidelines on what foods can be imported. No foods that are produced from unpasteurized milk are allowed. The process of pasteurization involves, basically, the cooking of milk at about 160º for 15 seconds. In addition to killing off all the harmful bacteria, this process leaves the milk tasting cooked. Even the FDA admits that, "Pasteurization can affect the nutrient composition and flavor of foods." This change in the milk's taste is passed along to the cheese. Because of this, many small cheese makers refuse to use pasteurized milk because it alters the generations-old taste of their cheeses. None of their cheese can be legally imported. And those cheeses that can be imported face ridiculously high tariffs, usually from 40% to 90% but ranging as high as 300%, and are limited to specific amounts by quotas. The Harmonized Tariff Schedule outlining only the general import tariffs and quotas of dairy products alone published by the United States International Trade Commission is almost sixty pages long. In addition to these general requirements, there are additional tariffs and limits for specific countries. As a result of the quotas, demand for the limited amount of imported cheese raises prices, which is already expensive due to the higher costs of artisan production, international shipping, and tariffs. All of these factors lead to incredibly high prices that cannot be afforded by typical middle-class consumers. So chances are that you will only find one or two imported cheeses in your supermarket, if that. There are small shops that specialize in cheese but it is generally too expensive and inconvenient for anyone except cheese connoisseurs to shop there. As for the coveted raw-milk cheeses, illegal cheese smuggling is always an option. A man named Thomer has posted a simple beginner's guide to international cheese smuggling on the Internet, in which he offers several useful tips. Salon Travel offers a similar guide that gives three ways in which raw-milk cheeses can be obtained in the United States: flagrant smuggling, sketchy black market mail ordering firms, and from small shops that imported illegal raw milk cheeses "by-mistake." However, although these options offer a way to get quality artisan raw milk cheeses, they are illegal, and, therefore, even more expensive than the legal tariff-bombarded cheeses. So, if you really want to experience good cheese, you need to be willing to shell out a lot of money or move out of the States.

Oni, my Italian Greyhound puppy, has the parasite Giardia duodenalis living in his intestines. He probably got it from eating another dog's shit. It was causing some really messy diarrhea so I took him to the vet. After examining Oni, the vet gave me pills for him and explained how I could force them down his throat by massaging his neck with one hand while stuffing the pill into his mouth with the other. He made it sound simple, but I couldn't get it to work. So, I tried hiding the pills in hot dogs, then lunchmeat, and even bacon. Oni managed to eat all of these without swallowing any of the pills. Finally, I decided to switch to cheese. It worked. In the weeks to come, I conducted a couple taste tests and discovered that Oni likes mild Cheddar better than sharp Cheddar, Mozzarella, or Muenster. I never gave him processed American cheese, but I'm sure he would have hated it if I had.

There are some forces working within the United States to produce quality American cheeses. Although their cheeses are vastly different from European processors', they still try to uphold the quality of American cheese making. One of these is the Tillamook cheese co-op of Tillamook County, Oregon. Founded in 1909 by a local group of farmers, Tillamook today produces over 93 million pounds of cheese annually. They specialize in Cheddar, but also produce Swiss, Monterey Jack, Colby, and Colby Jack. Unlike many of the wonderful cheeses that you read about in cheese books, Tillamook's cheeses are actually accessible to American consumers. And, if you're ever in Oregon and bored, you can stop by their main factory and take a free tour. Several states also have milk advisory boards that oversee all dairy production, including, of course, cheese. California's Milk Advisory Board has been very active in promoting Californian cheese production and exportation. They are responsible for the huge, "It's the Cheese" ad campaign that began in 1995 and helped lead to a record-setting production of 1.8 billion pounds of cheese in the year 2003. The Milk Advisory Board has taken many steps to ensure that the colossal amount of cheese produced in that state is worthy of their quality seal. The seal reads "Real California Cheese" and was introduced in 1984 to help consumers recognize the cheese as a quality Californian product. To receive the seal, cheese makers have to follow a set of guidelines even stricter than the FDA's. For example, almost all California cheese is produced from milk less than 24 hours old and has only been transported short distances. Co-ops and advisory boards like these are very helpful in maintaining the quality of mass-produced cheeses, but at the same time, they make it difficult for cheese makers to do anything out of the ordinary to give their cheese unique characteristics. As a result, the billions of pounds of cheese produced each year in California, Tillamook, and similarly organized regions are almost always safe, fresh, and uniform in taste, but at the same time, they are bland, uninteresting, and uniform in taste.

So now that I have thoroughly convinced you that cheese is, in fact, the greatest substance on Earth, you may be asking yourself, "What is the next step?" Well, I can't necessarily answer this for you, but I can offer a few suggestions. First, become a member of the American Cheese Society. For only $75, you get a year's subscription to their newsletter, reduced registration fees at the Annual American Cheese Society Conference, and your name will be added to their member roster. Or, if you are willing to relocate to Pittsburgh, you could apply for the job of Cheese Manager at the Giant Eagle grocery chain. If you're lucky enough to get the job, you'd be making money and living your passion for cheese at the same time. If that doesn't appeal to you, perhaps you should consider working for the State of Wisconsin as a manager for the Dairy 2020 program. You'd make up to $50,000 a year and, again, be able to live and spread your passion for cheese.

My best friend and I were driving west along the Trans-Canada Highway on our way to Seattle from Calgary. We'd been in the car all day and, although the scenery was unbelievable, we were both getting tired of driving. Off to the right, we saw a huge yellow sign with "Cheese" printed in bold, capital letters. Naturally, we were curious. A few minutes later, we passed a sign that informs us that a cheese factory is less than a kilometer away, on the right. We stopped, our last stop before British Columbia, and pulled into the parking lot. The cheese factory was not large, but there were many cars in the parking lot. A few of the license plates said Alberta, Wild Rose Country, but most were from various states. We went in and saw a large window on our left. Behind it were men and machines working to process cheese. The cheese they make is for sale in refrigerated steel bins throughout the store. We wandered around a bit aimlessly looking at the variety of cheeses. There were hundreds of cheeses. Most were Cheddar or Monterey Jack with flavors like jalapeño added in. Suddenly I froze. I couldn't move. I saw behind the counter the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen. I nudged Matt and he saw her too. We meandered around the store for a while pretending to look at cheeses and sneaking looks at her as often as we could. Being in the middle of a 9,000-mile road trip, neither of us had much money for specialty cheeses, but we knew that we had to think of some way to talk to this girl. I picked up the nearest cheese to my hand, a tiny block of extra sharp cheddar that cost $8.00 and head up to the cash register. I thought of what to say while she rang the customer in front of me. The other customer left and I handed her the cheese. When she took it from my hand, she looked up, but I could barely make eye contact. She scanned the barcode, told me the total, and put the cheese in a yellow bag with the cheese factory's name printed in bold black letters on the front. I handed her the money, silent. She said, "Thank you," and handed me my change. I took it and the cheese and we left.

Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Products — Introduction to Cheese and Its Constituents

Introduction to Cheese and Its Constituents

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Published: Jan 31, 2024

Words: 676 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Cheese composition and constituents, cheese production process, types of cheeses.

Ford, A. (2012). Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Kindstedt, P. S. (2012). Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Smith, T. (2017). Artisan Cheese Making at Home: Techniques & Recipes for Mastering World-Class Cheeses. Storey Publishing, LLC.

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Introduction

Inoculation and curdling

Cutting and shrinking, making pasteurized process cheese.

cheese making

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Table Of Contents

cheese making , process by which milk is transformed into cheese . With the variety of milks, bacterial cultures , enzymes, molds, environmental conditions, and technical processes, literally hundreds of varieties of cheese are made throughout the world. See also list of cheeses .

Primitive forms of cheese have been made since humans started domesticating animals. Milk from cows , and presumably from other animals, was used for cheese making by about 1000 bce . No one knows exactly who made the first cheese, but, according to one ancient legend , it was made accidentally by an Arabian merchant crossing the desert. The merchant had put his drinking milk in a pouch made from a sheep’s stomach. The natural rennin in the lining of the pouch, along with heat from the sun, caused the milk to coagulate and then separate into curds and whey. At nightfall the whey satisfied the merchant’s thirst, and the curds (cheese), which had a delightful flavour, satisfied his hunger.

From its birthplace in the Middle East , cheese making spread as far as England with the expansion of the Roman Empire . During the Middle Ages , monks and merchants of Europe made cheese an established food of that area. In 1620 cheese and cows were part of the ship’s stores carried to North America by the Pilgrims on the Mayflower . Until the middle of the 19th century, cheese was a local farm product. Few, if any, distinct varieties of cheese were developed deliberately. Rather, the cheese made in each locality ripened under specific conditions of air temperature and humidity, bacterial and mold activity, and milk source, acquiring certain characteristics of its own. Different varieties appeared largely as a result of accidental changes or modifications in one or more steps of the cheese-making process. Because there was little understanding of the microbiology and chemistry involved, these changes were difficult to duplicate . Cheese making was an art, and the process was a closely guarded secret that was passed down from one generation to the next.

With increasing scientific knowledge came a greater understanding of the bacteriological and chemical changes that are necessary to produce many types of cheese. Thus, it has become possible to control more precisely each step in the cheese-making process and to manufacture a more uniform product. Cheese making is now a science as well as an art.

Fundamentals of cheese making

The cheese-making process involves removing a major part of the water contained in fresh fluid milk while retaining most of the solids. Since storage life increases as water content decreases, cheese making can be considered a form of food preservation through the process of milk fermentation .

The fermentation of milk into finished cheese requires several essential steps: preparing and inoculating the milk with lactic-acid-producing bacteria , curdling the milk, cutting the curd, shrinking the curd (by cooking), draining or dipping the whey, salting, pressing, and ripening. These steps begin with four basic ingredients: milk, microorganisms, rennet, and salt.

Milk for cheese making must be of the highest quality. Because the natural microflora present in milk frequently includes undesirable types called psychrophiles , good farm sanitation and pasteurization or partial heat treatment are important to the cheese-making process. In addition, the milk must be free of substances that may inhibit the growth of acid-forming bacteria (e.g., antibiotics and sanitizing agents). Milk is often pasteurized to destroy pathogenic microorganisms and to eliminate spoilage and defects induced by bacteria. However, since pasteurization destroys the natural enzymes found in milk, cheese produced from pasteurized milk ripens less rapidly and less extensively than most cheese made from raw or lightly heat-treated milk.

During pasteurization, the milk may be passed through a standardizing separator to adjust the fat-to-protein ratio of the milk. In some cases, the cheese yield is improved by concentrating protein in a process known as ultrafiltration . The milk is then inoculated with fermenting microorganisms and rennet , which promote curdling.

The fermenting microorganisms carry out the anaerobic conversion of lactose to lactic acid . The type or types of organisms used depend on the variety of cheese and on the production process. Rennet is an enzymatic preparation that is usually obtained from the fourth stomach of calves. It contains a number of proteolytic (protein-degrading) enzymes, including rennin and pepsin . Some cheeses, such as cottage cheese and cream cheese , are produced by acid coagulation alone. In the presence of lactic acid, rennet, or both, the milk protein casein clumps together and precipitates out of solution—a process known as curdling , or coagulation. Coagulated casein assumes a solid or gel-like structure (the curd ), which traps most of the fat, bacteria, calcium, phosphate, and other particulates. The remaining liquid—the whey —contains water, proteins resistant to acidic and enzymatic denaturation (e.g., antibodies ), carbohydrates (lactose), and minerals.

Lactic acid produced by the starter culture organisms has several functions. It promotes curd formation by rennet (the activity of rennet requires an acidic pH ), causes the curd to shrink, enhances whey drainage (syneresis), and helps prevent the growth of undesirable microorganisms during cheese making and ripening. In addition, acid affects the elasticity of the finished curd and promotes fusion of the curd into a solid mass. Moreover, enzymes released by the bacterial cells influence flavour development during ripening.

Salt is usually added to the curd. In addition to enhancing flavour, it helps to withdraw the whey from the curd and inhibits the growth of undesirable microorganisms.

After the curd is formed, it is usually cut with fine wire “knives” into small cubes approximately one centimetre (one-half inch) square. The curd is then gently heated, causing it to shrink. The degree of shrinkage determines the moisture content and the final consistency of the cheese. Whey is removed by draining or dipping. The whey may be further processed to make whey cheeses (e.g., ricotta) or beverages, or it may be dried in order to preserve it as a food ingredient.

Most cheese is ripened for varying amounts of time in order to bring about the chemical changes necessary for transforming fresh curd into a distinctive aged cheese. These changes are catalyzed by enzymes from three main sources: rennet or other enzyme preparations of animal or vegetable origin added during coagulation, microorganisms that grow within the cheese or on its surface, and the cheese milk itself. The ripening time may be as short as one month, as for Brie , or a year or more, as in the case of sharp cheddar.

The ripening of cheese is influenced by the interaction of bacteria, enzymes, and physical conditions in the curing room. The speed of the reactions is determined by temperature and humidity conditions in the room as well as by the moisture content of the cheese. In most cheeses, lactose continues to be fermented into lactic acid and lactates, or it is hydrolyzed to form other sugars. As a result, aged cheeses such as Emmentaler and cheddar have no residual lactose.

In a similar manner, proteins and lipids (fats) are broken down during ripening. The degree of protein decomposition, or proteolysis , affects both the flavour and the consistency of the final cheese. It is especially apparent in Limburger and some blue-mold ripened cheeses. Surface-mold ripened cheeses, such as Brie , rely on enzymes produced by the white Penicillium camemberti mold to break down proteins from the outside. When lipids are broken down (as in Parmesan and Romano cheeses), the process is called lipolysis.

How bacteria “blow” holes in Swiss cheese

The eyes, or holes, typical of Swiss-type cheeses such as Emmentaler and Gruyère , come from a secondary fermentation that takes place when, after two weeks, the cheeses are moved from refrigerated curing to a warmer room, where temperatures are in the range of 20 to 24 °C (68 to 75 °F). At this stage, residual lactates provide a suitable medium for propionic acid bacteria ( Propionibacterium shermanii ) to grow and generate carbon dioxide gas. Eye formation takes three to six weeks. Warm-room curing is stopped when the wheels develop a rounded surface and the echo of holes can be heard when the cheese is thumped. The cheese is then moved back to a cold room, where it is aged at about 7 °C (45 °F) for 4 to 12 months in order to develop its typical sweet nutty flavour.

The unique ripening of blue-veined cheeses comes from spores of the mold Penicillium roqueforti or P. glaucum , which are added to the milk or to the curds before pressing and are activated by air. Air is introduced by “needling” the cheese with a device that punches about 50 small holes into the top. These air passages allow mold spores to grow vegetative cells and spread their greenish blue mycelia , or threadlike structures, through the cheese. Penicillium molds are rich in proteolytic and lipolytic enzymes, so that during ripening a variety of trace compounds are produced, such as free amines , amino acids , carbonyls , and fatty acids —all of which ultimately affect the flavour and texture of the cheese.

Surface-ripened cheeses such as Gruyère , brick, Port Salut , and Limburger derive their flavour from both internal ripening and the surface environment . For instance, the high-moisture wiping of the surface of Gruyère gives that cheese a fuller flavour than its Emmentaler counterpart. Specific organisms, such as Brevibacterium linens , in Limburger cheese result in a reddish brown surface growth and the breakdown of protein into amino nitrogen. The resulting odour is offensive to some, but the flavour and texture of the cheese are pleasing to many.

Not all cheeses are ripened. Cottage , cream , ricotta, and most mozzarella cheeses are ready for sale as soon as they are made. All these cheeses have sweet delicate flavours, and they are often combined with other foods.

Some natural cheese is made into pasteurized process cheese , in which complete ripening is halted by heat. The resulting product has an indefinite shelf life. Most process cheese is used in food service outlets and other applications where convenient uniform melting is required.

Pasteurized process cheese is made by grinding and mixing natural cheese with other ingredients, such as water, emulsifying agents, colouring, and flavourings. The mixture is then heated to a temperature of at least 65.5 °C (150 °F) for at least 30 seconds and stirred to form a homogeneous plastic mass. Process cheese foods and spreads differ from process cheese in that they may contain other ingredients besides those in process cheese, such as nonfat dry milk, cheese whey, and additional water, which lessen the proportion of cheese in the final product. Process cheese and related products may be mixed with fruits, vegetables, or meat.

American cheddar is processed most frequently. However, other cheeses, such as washed-curd, Colby, Swiss, Gruyère, and Limburger, are similarly processed. In a slight variation, cold pack or club cheese is made by grinding and mixing one or more varieties of cheese without heat. This cheese food may contain added flavourings or other ingredients.

Food with a Side of Science & History

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Co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley serve up a brand new episode every two weeks.

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Say Cheese!

Cheese is the chameleon of the food world, as well as one of its greatest delights. fresh and light or funky and earthy, creamy and melty or crystalline and crumbly—no other food offers such a variety of flavors and textures..

But cheese is not just a treat for the palate: its discovery changed the course of Western civilization, and, today, cheese rinds are helping scientists conduct cutting-edge research into microbial ecology. In this episode of Gastropod, we investigate cheese in all stinking glory, from ancient Mesopotamia to medieval France, from the origins of cheese factories and Velveeta to the growing artisanal cheese movement in the U.S. Along the way, we search for the answer to a surprisingly complex question: what is cheese? Join us as we bust cheese myths, solve cheese mysteries, and put together the ultimate cheese plate.

The Secret History of Cheese, or, Why the Cheese Origin Story is a Myth

This is the story you'll often hear about how humans discovered cheese: one hot day nine thousand years ago, a nomad was on his travels, and brought along some milk in an animal stomach—a sort of proto-thermos—to have something to drink at the end of the day. But when he arrived, he discovered that the rennet in the stomach lining had curdled the milk, creating the first cheese. But there’s a major problem with that story, as University of Vermont cheese scientist and historian Paul Kindstedt told Gastropod: the nomads living in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East in 7000 B.C. would have been lactose-intolerant. A nomad on the road wouldn't have wanted to drink milk; it would have left him in severe gastro-intestinal distress.

Kindstedt, author of the book Cheese and Culture , explained that about a thousand years before traces of cheese-making show up in the archaeological record, humans began growing crops. Those early fields of wheat and other grains attracted local wild sheep and goats, which provide milk for their young. Human babies are also perfectly adapted for milk. Early humans quickly made the connection and began dairying—but for the first thousand years, toddlers and babies were the only ones consuming the milk. Human adults were uniformly lactose-intolerant, says Kindstedt. What's more, he told us that “we know from some exciting archaeo-genetic and genomic modeling that the capacity to tolerate lactose into adulthood didn’t develop until about 5500 BC”—which is at least a thousand years after the development of cheese.

The real dawn of cheese came about 8,500 years ago, with two simultaneous developments in human history. First, by then, over-intensive agricultural practices had depleted the soil, leading to the first human-created environmental disaster. As a result, Neolithic humans began herding goats and sheep more intensely, as those animals could survive on marginal lands unfit for crops. And secondly, humans invented pottery: the original practical milk-collection containers.

In the warm environment of the Fertile Crescent region, Kinstedt explained, any milk not used immediately and instead left to stand in those newly invented containers "would have very quickly, in a matter of hours, coagulated [due to the heat and the natural lactic acid bacteria in the milk]. And at some point, probably some adventurous adult tried some of the solid material and found that they could tolerate it a lot more of it than they could milk.” That's because about 80 percent of the lactose drains off with the whey, leaving a digestible and, likely, rather delicious fresh cheese.

Cheese Changed the Course of Western Civilization

With the discovery of cheese, suddenly those early humans could add dairy to their diets. Cheese made an entirely new source of nutrients and calories available for adults, and, as a result, dairying took off in a major way. What this meant, says Kindstedt, is that “children and newborns would be exposed to milk frequently, which ultimately through random mutations selected for children who could tolerate lactose later into adulthood.”

In a very short time, at least in terms of human evolution—perhaps only a few thousand years—that mutation spread throughout the population of the Fertile Crescent. As those herders migrated to Europe and beyond, they carried this genetic mutation with them. According to Kindstedt, “It’s an absolutely stunning example of a genetic selection occurring in an unbelievably short period of time in human development. It’s really a wonder of the world, and it changed Western civilization forever.”

Tasting the First Cheeses Today

In lieu of an actual time machine, Gastropod has another trick for listeners who want to know what cheese tasted like 9,000 years ago: head to the local grocery store and pick up some ricotta or goat’s milk chevre . These cheeses are coagulated using heat and acid, rather than rennet, in much the same way as the very first cheeses. Based on the archaeological evidence of Neolithic pottery containers found in the Fertile Crescent, those early cheeses would have been made from goat’s or sheep’s milk, meaning that they likely would have been somewhat funkier than cow’s milk ricotta, and perhaps of a looser, wetter consistency, more like cottage cheese.

“It would have had a tart, clean flavor,” says Kindstedt, “and it would have been even softer than the cheese you buy at the cheese shop. It would have been a tart, clean, acidic, very moist cheese.”

So, the next time you're eating a ricotta lasagne or cheesecake, just think: you're tasting something very similar to the cheese that gave ancient humans a dietary edge, nearly 9,000 years ago.

Camembert Used to be Green

Those early cheese-making peoples spread to Europe, but it wasn't until the Middle Ages that the wild diversity of cheeses we see today started to emerge. In the episode, we trace the emergence of Swiss cheese and French bloomy rind cheeses, like Brie. But here's a curious fact that didn't make it into the show: when Gastropod visited Tufts microbiologist Benjamin Wolfe in his cheese lab , he showed us a petri dish in which he was culturing the microbe used to make Camembert, Penicillium camemberti . And it was a gorgeous blue-green color.

Wolfe explained that according to Camembert: A National Myth , a history of the iconic French cheese written by Pierre Boisard, the original Camembert cheeses in Normandy would have been that same color, their rinds entirely colonized by Wolfe's "green, minty, crazy” microbe. Indeed, in nineteenth-century newspapers, letters, and advertisements, Camembert cheeses are routinely described as green, green-blue, or greenish-grey. The pure white Camembert we know and love today did not become the norm until the 1920s and 30s. What happened, according to Wolfe, is that if you grow the wild microbe "in a very lush environment, like cheese is, it eventually starts to mutate. And along the way, these white mutants that look like the thing we think of as Camembert popped up.”

In his book, Boisard attributes the rapid rise of the white mutant to human selection, arguing that Louis Pasteur's discoveries in germ theory at the start of the twentieth-century led to a prejudice against the original "moldy"-looking green Camembert rinds, and a preference for the more hygienic-seeming pure white ones. Camembert's green origins have since been almost entirely forgotten, even by the most traditional cheese-makers.

Listen to this week’s episode of Gastropod for much more on the secret history and science of cheese, including how early cheese bureaucracy led to the development of writing, what studying microbes in cheese rinds can tell us about microbial ecology in our guts, and why in the world American cheese is dyed orange. (Hint: the color was originally seen as a sign of high quality.) Plus, Gastropod will help you put together the world's most interesting cheese plate to wow guests at your next dinner party. Listen here for more!

EPISODE NOTES

Heather paxson.

Heather Paxson is a professor of anthropology at MIT, as well as the author of an excellent book, The Life of Cheese , all about the new wave of American artisanal cheese-makers.

Stilton_Colston_Basset_IMG_9504_modified

Microbes Make the Cheese

In the episode, Heather Paxson describes the struggles she and her colleagues went through as part of a committee responsible for writing this American Academy of Microbiology FAQ on microbes and cheese, "Microbes Make the Cheese," published in February 2015 and available as a free PDF here .

Paul Kindstedt

Paul Kindstedt is a professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Vermont, where he studies the chemistry, biochemistry, structure, and function of cheese. His book, Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization , came out in 2012.

Benjamin Wolfe

At his lab at Tufts University , microbiologist Benjamin Wolfe studies how microbes from food (mostly cheese!) interact, in order to tease out the ecological and evolutionary forces that shape microbial diversity. He is co-founder of MicrobialFoods.org , an online publication exploring the science of fermented foods.

Cheese Rind Communities Provide Tractable Systems for In Situ and In Vitro Studies of Microbial Diversity

This paper , published in the journal Cell in July 2014, was co-authored by Benjamin Wolfe, Julie E. Button, Marcela Santarelli, and Rachel J. Dutton. The team surveyed 137 European and North American cheeses to assess microbial diversity, with some fascinating results. At the time, Wolfe was working in Rachel Dutton's lab at Harvard's FAS Center for Systems Biology . A Gastropod listener and current post-doc in Dutton's lab, Kevin Bonham, recently wrote a three-part essay at Scientific American that goes into detail about the process for DNA-sequencing a cheese rind, and how to turn that data into useful information.

To eat the rind or not?

You may have noticed that some eaters scorn the rinds of cheeses, from the soft fuzzy white carpet that envelops brie to the tougher edge of an aged cheddar, while others tuck right into them. Which approach is correct? The answer depends on what kind of rind it is—as well as your own comfort level with microbes.

Some rinds today are covered with wax, and others, such as England’s Montgomery Cheddar, are surrounded by cloth, neither of which are edible. But for all the rest, the rind is what microbiologists such as Ben Wolfe call a "biofilm"—an entire ecosystem of microbes that colonize the cheese surface, gluing themselves together. Historically, the rind creates a method of preservation, a surface “to keep [the cheese] from being damaged and make it easy to transport. So people just let these rinds develop.” These microbial rinds are perfectly safe for consumption, though they have a different, sometimes stronger, taste than the cheese itself. So: Eat the rind or not? Heather Paxson, who unhesitatingly ate the rind on a St. Nectaire during an afternoon of cheese-tasting with Gastropod, says “It’s purely a matter of taste.”

Frankencheeses

As we explain in the episode, Ben Wolfe has become something of a "cheese doctor," with cheese-makers sending him their "Frankencheeses" in the mail, in order to figure out what went wrong. Meanwhile, listener "Moldy in Avignon" sent us an email with the subject "Gross Cheese Mystery," and a photograph of really, really old cheeses for sale in the Avignon market. We consulted with Ben, who shared his own photos of brown, nasty-looking French cheeses for sale at the Slow Food Festival in Bra, Italy. Apparently, these kinds of super-aged cheeses are meant for eating, though the cheese seller in this short video explains they are hard to find these days and much less popular than they used to be.

The brown dust is actually microscopic cheese mites: Wolfe calls them the "gophers" of the cheese world, as they eat into the rind, aerating it as well as increasing the surface area available for microbial colonization (and thus flavor development). They're common in cheese aging, although in the U.S. they're usually regarded as a pest, and cheeses are carefully brushed to remove them. Here's footage of a cheese mite munching on microbial hyphae, filmed at the Dutton lab.

Cheese stories, cheese ads, and Wallace & Gromit

This episode wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without all your cheese stories: thanks to all of you who wrote or called in, and particularly to Elana Lubin, Roz Cummins, Emily Lo Gibson, Mike Simonovich, Jenny Morber, Etta Devine, Tasha from the Boston area, and Doug from Perth. We sampled audio from Alex Crowley's Wallace & Gromit "The Cheesesnatcher" claymation, as well as a 1986 Velveeta ad , a 1958 Kraft ad , and a "Time for Timer" Saturday morning cartoon PSA from the 1970s.

For a transcript of the show, please click here . Please note that the transcript is provided as a courtesy and may contain errors.

25 Interesting Facts about Cheese

By: Author Swedish Nomad

Posted on Last updated: March 20, 2021

Categories Food

Home / Food / 25 Interesting Facts about Cheese

Are you a cheese lover? Me too! Here are 25 Interesting Facts about Cheese that you probably didn’t know before reading this!

Cheese is a highly integral part of the diet in most Western countries, and it has been eaten for a long period of time. Various civilizations have produced unique types of cheeses, even the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks as well as Mesopotamia.

Today, many countries have excellent cheesemakers, but it’s most prominent in countries with lots of cattle or goats/sheep. To make this even more interesting, I want to challenge you and see how many of these cheese facts that you already know before reading this.

Cheese has been made for longer than 7000 years

There is no exact date of the invention of cheese, but the oldest findings date back some 7200 years to pottery in Croatia with evidence of cheesemaking. The oldest cheese ever found is 3200 years old, and it was found in the Saqqara necropolis.

It’s highly addictive

There are many studies that confirm that cheese is highly addictive, and it has some similarities to the effects of drugs. Cheese contains a chemical that can trigger opioid receptors in the human brain.

Photo: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

There are more than 2000 varieties of cheese worldwide

How many types of cheeses can you name without googling? In total there are more than 2000 varieties in the world, which means that it would take about 5.5 years if you tried one cheese per day.

This is one of the most fascinating facts about Cheese and it’s quite amazing how you can create so many varieties from animal milk.

Gouda is the most consumed popular type of cheese

Gouda is a semi-hard cheese made from cow’s milk in the Netherlands . It can be aged for various lengths which change both the texture and flavor. Gouda is the most popular cheese in the world, and you’ll find it in most countries around the world.

Photo: Viatcheslav Grabchak/Shutterstock

Lactose-intolerant people can eat cheese

Lactose-intolerant people are likely to get unpleasant symptoms while consuming milk, but cheese is usually fine because during the process much of the lactose is weighed off with the whey.

Also, when cheeses are being aged the bacteria is further breaking down the traces of lactose, which is basically a milk sugar.

There are various types of moldy cheese

Mold is not always favored when it comes to food, more often than not it’s a sign of a product going bad and becoming toxic for humans.

But cheese is an exception, and there are various types of moldy cheeses that are safely to consume, and they are often very healthy as well. Blue cheese is perhaps the most famous type of moldy cheese in addition to gorgonzola and Roquefort.

Photo: Chursina Viktoriia/Shutterstock

Certain cheese names are capitalized

All cheeses in the world which are named after a city or town have capitalized names. For example, Gouda is written with a capital G but mozzarella is typically not capitalized.

However, it won’t cause any confusion if you capitalize or not and you can safely write every type of cheese with lower cases.

Edam Cheese never goes bad

Edam is a Dutch cheese from North Holland, and it does not spoil, it only hardens as time goes by. This made Edam a popular product to bring on sea voyages and to remote colonies in the 14th and 18th centuries.

This is one of the many interesting facts about cheese!

Photo: picturepartners/Shutterstock

The heaviest cheese ever produced weighed 57,518 pounds

A typical cheese is sold by the pound or kilo, but they are usually produced and packaged in larger cheese wheels. The heaviest cheese in the world weighed as much as 57,518 pounds and was produced by a Canadian cheesemaker.

Hard cheeses have a longer shelf life than soft cheeses

Hard cheeses can be aged and will have a longer shelf life compared to soft cheeses, even if the package has been opened. Some of the most popular hard cheeses are Parmigiano-Reggiano, Asiago D’allevo, Grana Padano, and Pecorino Romano.

Photo: Vlasov Yevheni/Shutterstock

Pule is the world’s most expensive cheese

You probably didn’t know that donkey cheese was the most expensive cheese in the world. It’s made in Serbia and is known as Pule. 1 Pound can be sold for as much as $600–$1,000.

The holes in Swiss cheese are a result of fermentation

The holes in Swiss cheese are a mystery to some, and some parents even lure their kids that it’s little mouses that have been eating.

This is of course not true, but instead, the holes are a result of the fermentation process where a bacteria releases carbon dioxide when consuming the lactic acid, which forms bubbles.

Photo: Sunny Forest/Shutterstock

Fun facts about Cheese

Moose cheese costs around $420 per pound, since each milking takes two hours, and must be done in complete silence
Each American adult consumes an average of 33 pounds of cheese each year
Vieux Boulogne is the smelliest cheese in the world
Cheddar cheese is the most popular cheese in the United Kingdom
The largest cheese sculpture weighs 691.27 kg (1,524 lb)
Pizza Hut uses about 136 million kilograms (300 million pounds) of cheese annually

Photo: Mehmet Cetin/Shutterstock

Cheese facts for kids

Cheese is made from milk and it can be from various types of animals such as cows, goats, sheep, buffalo, camels, yak and many more
There are various criteria to classify cheeses depending on texture, age, production, etc.
Some cheeses have added flavors or even berries/jam
Eating cheese 30 minutes before sleep has shown in studies that it can help sleep
Cheese is most flavorsome when eaten at room temperature
There is a national cheese day, the 4th of June
It is fully packed with vitamins and essential nutrients such as protein

Photo: BeataGFX/Shutterstock

General information about Cheese

Cheesemaking have spread worldwide, and while some countries have specialized in certain types of cheeses, some types have become a favorite globally as well, such as Gouda, cheddar, feta, Edam, Roquefort, Danish blue cheese, Mozzarella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pecorino, etc.

Cheese is made from milk and forms when the milk protein casein coagulates. The most common types of milk used for cheesemaking are milk from cows, buffalo, goat, sheep, and yak.

The texture and flavor are highly dependable of the origin of the milk and what the animals have been eating. It also depends on bacteria, pasteurization, butterfat, processing and how long it has been aged for.

Furthermore, it’s possible to add acids and other ingredients to make a certain type of cheese.

Photo: Y Photo Studio/Shutterstock

How many of these Cheese facts did you know already? Leave a comment below!

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Study cheese

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Taste cheese professionally

Ok there’s not necessarily a wrong way to eat cheese, but there is a better way, a way that will increase your enjoyment and appreciation for that lovely piece of clothbound cheddar you have in your fridge. A way that professionals use to effectively judge and describe the flavours in a piece of cheese. If your writing about cheese, then taste and texture descriptors are key.

Learn the correct way to taste cheese using the Academy’s Structured Approach to Tasting Cheese. This method, used by cheese judges the world over, gives you a broader appreciation of the complexities of a cheese, its quality and flavour profile. Tasting in this way educates your palate and increases your enjoyment of cheese, allowing you to offer insightful opinions on the cheeses you taste. You’ll also be introduced to the principles of pairing cheese with drinks and we’ll give you a clue, there’s far more to it than just red wine!

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Some cheeses are so well known you’ll find them on almost all cheese counters. During our course you can study 25 of these iconic cheeses, understand their origins, provenance and flavour profile. What’s more, studying with Academy of Cheese gives you access to our cheese library with over 150+ cheeses! As well as providing key facts about a cheese, the library offers a description of its flavour profile, pairing suggestions and tales from its history and anecdotes from the cheesemaker.

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Uncover the history of cheesemaking and its fascinating journey to the industry we know today. With modules on milk production and cheesemaking, buying and distribution, plus maturing affinage and grading you’ll take away a new perspective on cheese, and understand the differences between large scale and artisanal production.

An Academy of Cheese courses introduces the practical skills to cut, store and serve cheese correctly, using tools appropriate for the variety of a cheese. You will also understand protected food names, how they are displayed on packaging and what they mean for the quality of cheese you’re buying.

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Who Moved My Cheese Essay: Book Summary, Analysis & Real Life Examples

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Who Moved My Cheese Book Summary

Who moved my cheese analysis, who moved my cheese: conclusion.

Change is inevitable, and Spencer Johnson knew this very well when he wrote Who Moved My Cheese . This short dramatic story addresses change in life, exploring how one could handle it in the workplace and day-to-day life as well. Positive change comes when one can sense, expect, and adapt to it by responding appropriately through action. After executing all these measures, change becomes enjoyable and life more interesting, with better results in work and life. This summary essay on Who Moved My Cheese shall provide a critical analysis of the main characters of the story and their attitude to changes..

Of all other things in life, change is the only constant thing, and by learning to adapt to and enjoy it, life stops being a puzzle and becomes one enjoyable adventure. With full knowledge of these facts about change, Spencer wrote Who Moved My Cheese from personal experience to help others accept and adopt change in life. Laying down strategies in handling change is of the essence of this book.

The book opens by stating the four major characters, Scurry and Sniff, the two mice and Haw and Hem, the two little people. “Sniff…sniffs out change early, Scurry…scurries into action, Hem…denies and resists change as he fears it will lead to something worse, Haw…learns to adapt in time when he sees changing can lead to something better!” (Spencer 1).

Into the plot, Spencer adds a maze, which represents the workplace or the place where people look for the things they desire. Cheese is used as a metaphor in Who Moved My Cheese for the things that people look for in life like food, health, wealth, among others. Having put this in place, the author starts the story.

The two mice and the two little people live in a maze where every morning, they run to Cheese Station C and get enough cheese for everyone’s needs. With time, self-satisfaction sets in, and Hem and Haw start taking their cheese for granted.

Fortunately, Sniff and Scurry are ever serious with their cheese, and they keep on investigating its source to see whether the supply is diminishing. One day, these characters run to the station only to find the cheese is gone. Scurry and Sniff, being little creatures void of intelligence and reasoning, are not surprised by the absence of the cheese.

They look for another cheese somewhere else in the maze. However, Hem and Haw employ their intelligence to determine who might have moved their cheese. They cannot accept the fact that cheese is gone, so they end up wasting many days staring at the empty station. In other words, the two little people with their intelligence cannot accept and adapt to change easily, while the two mice notice the change, adapt to it, and move on to find new cheese.

After many days of staying at the empty station , Haw decides to leave and search for another source of cheese. However, he finds the idea of leaving the station tempting, especially after listening to negative Hem, who sees it risky to leave it. Consequently, Haw decides to join Hem in staying at Station C wishing and waiting for a miraculous reappearance of their lost cheese. Finally, Haw gets the idea that, if they do not do something, they will perish; therefore, he decides to move in search of new cheese.

For some time, he feels lost, but after many days of persistence, he starts feeling better about his exploits even though he has not gotten new cheese yet. He is convinced that, imagining that he has a new cheese will lead him to one, and this is precisely what happens; he finds a new cheese station, which is almost empty. Despite this misfortune, Haw learns a lesson.

Staying for long at this station causes Haw to miss the next cheese supply. He concludes, “The quick you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese” (Spencer 17). From a loving heart, Haw goes back to the station with some new cheese to replenish Hem. Unfortunately, Hem is still in denial, and he refuses Haw’s offer of a new cheese; he maintains that he wants his cheese back.

Hem maintains, “I want my own Cheese back and I’m not going to change until I get what I want” (Spencer 17). After realizing he cannot persuade Hem to leave Station C and search for new cheese, Haw leaves and continues his search for new cheese supplies.

In his adventures, Haw realizes change is not bad after all; consequently, he adopts the motto, “when you change what you believe, you change what you do” (Spencer 18). Therefore, to start with, Haw changes the way he believes and writes on a rock, “Old beliefs, do not lead you to new cheese” (Spencer 18).

Within no time, Haw realizes his new thinking pattern is producing new useful behaviors. Importantly, he notes he no longer goes back to any of the stations without cheese; instead, he searches through the maze to find new cheese-loaded stations. Finally, his positive attitude pays back as he comes to Cheese Station N.

To Haw’s surprise, Scurry and Sniff are already at this station. Haw observes Sniff and Scurry have grown fat making him conclude they have been around this cheese station for quite some time. Despite the time he wasted along the journey, Haw is thankful he has learned vital lessons.

To be on the safe side, he applies his new lessons daily. First, he investigates the station every morning to notice any changes in supply. In addition, he explores the whole maze to see if there are other sources of cheese supply in case the supply at the station runs out. As the story closes, Haw hears a sound and only hopes Hem has finally broken loose from his negative mentality to find the new station. Thus, it can be concluded that the four characters of the story represent people’s different attitudes to problems and changes.

A number of lessons come out clearly in this story. The vital thing to do when change beckons is to acknowledge it and take decisive action that lines up the change to work for one’s benefit. Denying change will lead to extinction or mediocrity, an unproductive life characterized by commonness, void of adventures and thrills.

Regarding the real life examples of Who Moved My Cheese characters, those who take after Sniff and Scurry in today’s world reap big from change; those who take after Haw benefit, although after a long struggle while those who take after Hem remain surrounded by fear of the unknown. The fundamental rule in the maze that is life is to acknowledge and take action towards utilizing change that comes one’s way. However, actions without a proper implementation strategy might lead to wasting a lot of time in the maze for no reason.

Sniff and Scurry, “had noticed the supply of cheese had been getting smaller every day, they were prepared for the inevitable and knew instinctively what to do” (Spencer 8). The preparedness that Scurry and Sniff had symbolizes the strategy that people should have in life to counterchange. The two mice would investigate the cheese everyday to note any changes in supply. Likewise, people should notice any little changes and strategize on how to counter the same.

In addition, during change, one needs to maintain a positive attitude. For Haw, he realizes, “Imagining myself enjoying the cheese even before I find it lead me to it” (Spencer 17). One has to set goals and then align his/her thoughts towards the positive realization of those goals. As the old saying asserts, ‘as a man thinks so he is,’ thinking of having achieved the set goals will lead to their realization.

As the conclusion of Who Moved My Cheese proves it, positive adaptation of change requires one to abandon fear and self-satisfaction. Just like Haw, it might seem hard to leave what one is used to; nevertheless, experience dictates that without leaving the seashore, one will never discover new oceans. Ignoring the facts does not change them; therefore, it is good for people to accept change because change is unavoidable.

The adage asserts that ‘change is the only constant thing’; consequently, adapting and repeatedly enjoying change is the best thing to do. As is clear from this summary essay on Who Moved My Cheese, Spencer wrote the story to illustrate the effects of denying change or accepting it. Acknowledging, strategizing for, acting on, and enjoying change, underlines Spencer’s work. The ‘Hems’ of today should learn from and emulate the ‘Sniffs’ and ‘Scurrys’ to avoid extinction or mediocrity.

Spencer, Johnson. Who Moved My Cheese?. N.d. Web.

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The Monday Morning Memo

Cheese by G.K. Chesterton

Published in `alarms and discursions’ (1910).

My forthcoming work in five volumes, `The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,’ is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to springle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: `If all the trees were bread and cheese’ – which is indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality which we require in an exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to `breeze’ and `seas’ (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say `Cheese it!’ or even `Quite the cheese.’ The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient – sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it), that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.

But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different. There was a noble Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on. Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization that holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and the bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella – artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese to soap (that vastly inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith’s Soap or Brown’s Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith’s Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown’s Soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire builders go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.

When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get a great many things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits – to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits – to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.

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Random Paragraph Generator

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If you're looking for random paragraphs, you've come to the right place. When a random word or a random sentence isn't quite enough, the next logical step is to find a random paragraph. We created the Random Paragraph Generator with you in mind. The process is quite simple. Choose the number of random paragraphs you'd like to see and click the button. Your chosen number of paragraphs will instantly appear.

While it may not be obvious to everyone, there are a number of reasons creating random paragraphs can be useful. A few examples of how some people use this generator are listed in the following paragraphs.

Creative Writing

Generating random paragraphs can be an excellent way for writers to get their creative flow going at the beginning of the day. The writer has no idea what topic the random paragraph will be about when it appears. This forces the writer to use creativity to complete one of three common writing challenges. The writer can use the paragraph as the first one of a short story and build upon it. A second option is to use the random paragraph somewhere in a short story they create. The third option is to have the random paragraph be the ending paragraph in a short story. No matter which of these challenges is undertaken, the writer is forced to use creativity to incorporate the paragraph into their writing.

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A random paragraph can also be an excellent way for a writer to tackle writers' block. Writing block can often happen due to being stuck with a current project that the writer is trying to complete. By inserting a completely random paragraph from which to begin, it can take down some of the issues that may have been causing the writers' block in the first place.

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Another productive way to use this tool to begin a daily writing routine. One way is to generate a random paragraph with the intention to try to rewrite it while still keeping the original meaning. The purpose here is to just get the writing started so that when the writer goes onto their day's writing projects, words are already flowing from their fingers.

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Another writing challenge can be to take the individual sentences in the random paragraph and incorporate a single sentence from that into a new paragraph to create a short story. Unlike the random sentence generator , the sentences from the random paragraph will have some connection to one another so it will be a bit different. You also won't know exactly how many sentences will appear in the random paragraph.

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It's not only writers who can benefit from this free online tool. If you're a programmer who's working on a project where blocks of text are needed, this tool can be a great way to get that. It's a good way to test your programming and that the tool being created is working well.

Above are a few examples of how the random paragraph generator can be beneficial. The best way to see if this random paragraph picker will be useful for your intended purposes is to give it a try. Generate a number of paragraphs to see if they are beneficial to your current project.

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Poems About Cheese
Who Moved My Cheese Analysis, Reading Comprehension Questions & Essay
The Magic of Cheese Making
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COMMENTS

Cheese Essay
Cheese is a by-product of the milk of usually either cows or goats, formed from the curds of the milk protein casein that are produced after the acidification of milk. It is produced by acidifying the milk by adding vinegar or lemon to the milk. Bacteria also acidify milk by turning the sugars in milk into lactic acid. The.
All You Need to Know About Cheese: [Essay Example], 487 words
Published: Mar 1, 2019. Cheese is a food derived from milk that is produced in a wide range of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. During production, the milk is usually acidified, and adding the enzyme rennet causes ...
On the Love of Cheese [essay]
This can be done by adding hot water to the curd, or by heating the walls or "jacket" of the cheese vat with hot water. Once the milk has soured, the next step is to separate the curd (milk solids) from the whey (mostly water). "Curdling" is usually done by adding rennet to the soured milk.
A Brief History of Cheese [essay] · Fermentology
Cheese is one of the oldest foods we humans have produced, possibly dating from the beginning of sheep and cattle herding 10,000 years ago. That said, the discovery of cheese making was probably accidental. It's likely that the curdling action of rennet was discovered when a herdsman poured milk into a sack or pouch made of an animal's ...
Essay on Cheese
Cheese is a food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other animals. It's created by adding a special ingredient called "rennet" to milk, which makes it thick. Then, the solid part, which is the cheese, is separated from the liquid. Cheese can be soft and spreadable or hard and good for grating.
The art of making cheese: [Essay Example], 668 words
The Art of Making Cheese. With hundreds of types and wide varieties of flavour, texture and styles, cheese is loved all over the globe. The different varieties of cheese depend on the origin of milk and the animal's diet. Mostly made from cow's milk, cheese is also produced from sheep, goat, buffalo and other mammals' milk.
On the Culinary and Artistic History of Cheese ‹ Literary Hub
Cheese is a fermented product created from milk, salt, rennet and a cast of powerful—albeit invisible to us—microbes. With a type such as emmental, cheesewrights depend on a particular bacteria to consume the lactic acid and release carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide bubbles are trapped in the curd and form "eyes.".
The Science Behind Your Cheese
A study in 2020 that looked at 55 artisanal Irish cheeses found that almost one in three cheese microbes possessed genes needed to produce "weapons" — chemical compounds that kill off rivals ...
Cheese
an informal essay about the history of cheese, cheesemaking, and other random cheese related information. RJR's Essays. Cheese. by Robert James Reese, 2005. According to the USDA, the average American consumes 7.5 pounds of Cheddar each year. Almost all of that is American Cheddar--hardly the same as traditional British Cheddar.
Introduction to Cheese and Its Constituents
The study of cheese and its constituents is crucial for understanding its flavor, texture, and culinary applications. This essay aims to provide an overview of cheese and its constituents, discussing the main components, production processes, and various types of cheese available in the market.
Johnson's "Who Moved My Cheese" in Real Life Essay
Exclusively available on IvyPanda®. "Who Moved My Cheese" is the story written by Spenser Johnson at the end of the 20th century. It reveals the situation when four mice face the disappearance of the cheese they are used to and need to move forward looking for another source of food (Johnson 25). Personally, I would like to see myself in a ...
Cheese making
The cheese-making process involves removing a major part of the water contained in fresh fluid milk while retaining most of the solids. Since storage life increases as water content decreases, cheese making can be considered a form of food preservation through the process of milk fermentation.. The fermentation of milk into finished cheese requires several essential steps: preparing and ...
Say Cheese!
Cheese is the chameleon of the food world, as well as one of its greatest delights. ... which ultimately through random mutations selected for children who could tolerate lactose later into adulthood." ... Kevin Bonham, recently wrote a three-part essay at Scientific American that goes into detail about the process for DNA-sequencing a cheese ...
25 Interesting Facts about Cheese
Fun facts about Cheese. Moose cheese costs around $420 per pound, since each milking takes two hours, and must be done in complete silence. Each American adult consumes an average of 33 pounds of cheese each year. Vieux Boulogne is the smelliest cheese in the world. Cheddar cheese is the most popular cheese in the United Kingdom.
Writing about Cheese? Let us take you to the next level
Study the Iconic cheeses. Some cheeses are so well known you'll find them on almost all cheese counters. During our course you can study 25 of these iconic cheeses, understand their origins, provenance and flavour profile. What's more, studying with Academy of Cheese gives you access to our cheese library with over 150+ cheeses!
Chesterton and the Ancients on Cheese
Chesterton and the Ancients on Cheese — FAITH & CULTURE. is the journal of the Augustine Institute's Graduate School of Theology. Its mission is to share the "joy in the truth" which our patron St. Augustine called "the good that all men seek.". In a witty little 1936 essay, G.K. Chesterton laments the "neglect of cheese in ...
"Who Moved My Cheese" Book by Spencer Johnson Essay
Exclusively available on IvyPanda®. In his book Who Moved My Cheese, Spencer Johnson covers how individuals cope with change that takes place in daily lives and affects them in numerous respects, both pleasantly and badly. Change processes are a fundamental component of human existence that imply direct and indirect actions that people ...
Who Moved My Cheese Essay: Book Summary, Analysis & Real ...
Who Moved My Cheese Book Summary. The book opens by stating the four major characters, Scurry and Sniff, the two mice and Haw and Hem, the two little people. "Sniff…sniffs out change early, Scurry…scurries into action, Hem…denies and resists change as he fears it will lead to something worse, Haw…learns to adapt in time when he sees ...
Cheese by Chesterton
A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella - artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese.
Random Paragraph Generator
If you're looking for random paragraphs, you've come to the right place. When a random word or a random sentence isn't quite enough, the next logical step is to find a random paragraph. We created the Random Paragraph Generator with you in mind. The process is quite simple. Choose the number of random paragraphs you'd like to see and click the ...