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Andrew Dalby - Cheese: A Global History

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Andrew Dalby Cheese: A Global History

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Take a slice of bread. Its perfectly okay in and of itself. Maybe it has a nice, crisp crust or the scent of sourdough. But really, its kind of boring. Now melt some cheese on ita sharp Vermont cheddar or a flavorful Swiss Gruyere. Mmm, delicious. Cheeseits the staple food, the accessory that makes everything better, from the hamburger to the ordinary sandwich to a bowl of macaroni. Despite its many uses and variations, there has never before been a global history of cheese, but here at last is a succinct, authoritative account, revealing how cheese was invented and where, when, and even why.

In bite-sized chapters well-known food historian Andrew Dalby tells the true and

savory story of cheese, from its prehistoric invention to the moment of its modern rebirth. Here you will find the most ancient cheese appellations, the first written description of the cheese-making process, a list of the luxury cheeses of classical Rome, the medieval rule-of-thumb for...

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CHEESE Edible Series Editor Andrew F Smith EDIBLE is a revolutionary new - photo 1

CHEESE

Picture 2

Edible

Series Editor: Andrew F. Smith

EDIBLE is a revolutionary new series of books dedicated to food and
drink that explores the rich history of cuisine. Each book reveals the
global history and culture of one type of food or beverage.

Already published

Chocolate Sarah Moss and
Alexander Badenoch

Curry Colleen Taylor Sen

Hamburger Andrew F. Smith

Hot Dog Bruce Kraig

Pancake Ken Albala

Pie Janet Clarkson

Pizza Carol Helstosky

Spices Fred Czarra

Forthcoming

Beer Bob Skilnik

Bread William Rubel

Cake Nicola Humble

Caviar Nichola Fletcher

Champagne Becky Sue Epstein

Cocktails Joseph M. Carlin

Coffee Jonathan Morris

Ice Cream Laura Weiss

Lobster Elisabeth Townsend

Milk Hannah Velten

Pasta Kantha Shelke

Potato Andrew F. Smith

Soup Janet Clarkson

Tea Helen Saberi

Corn Linda Murray Berzok

Dates Nawal Nasrallah

Fish and Chips Panikos Panayi

Gin Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

Tomato Deborah A. Duchon

Vodka Patricia Herlihy

Whiskey Kevin R. Rosar

Wine Marc Millon

Cheese

A Global History

Andrew Dalby

REAKTION BOOKS

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London EC1V 0DX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2009

Copyright Andrew Dalby 2009

The right of Andrew Dalby to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright and Design Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.

Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and
Index match the printed edition of this book.

Printed and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Dalby, Andrew, 1947
Cheese : a global history. (Edible)
1. Cheese History. 2. Cheesemaking History.
3. Cookery (Cheese)
I. Title II. Series
64I.37309-DC22

eISBN: 9781861897053

Contents

Cheese A Global History - image 3

The Cheeseboard

Cheese A Global History - image 4

Like a rock that will weather many storms, Parmesan presides over the cheeseboard. It was already famous around 1370 and it was already what it is today, a hard, aged cows-milk cheese when Giovanni Boccaccio in his Decameron, for the sake of a good story, invented a mountain made of grated parmigiano cheese, with people living on it who never did anything but make macaroni and ravioli and cook them in capon broth. How much earlier its history may go is unknown. A hundred years after Boccaccio, in 1475, Platinas gastronomic handbook De honesta voluptate et valetudine counted parmensis (its Latin name) as one of the two princely cheeses of Italy. His contemporaries were less certain what to call their favourite hard cheese. The Parmesan style was widespread in the Po valley; some liked the version made at Piacenza, others preferred Lodi, others again gave the credit to Milan. Finally Parma prevailed. By 1519 Parmesan cheese was a cultural clich in England, mentioned nonchalantly in a school Latin textbook: Ye shall eate parmeson chese! No wonder, because just a few years earlier Pope Julius II had made a present of a hundred Parmesan cheeses to Henry VIII. That was indeed a royal gift. In 1666, when Samuel Pepys and his neighbour saw the Fire of London approaching, they wiselydug a hole to conceal their most valuable possessions, and put our wine in it, and I my parmazan cheese as well as my wine. By that time hefty cylindrical Parmesan cheeses were a staple of international gastronomy, an ingredient in international cuisine. They still are. While many people only ever grate Parmesan, Italians know how good it is to eat in chunks so hard that it is almost crystalline, and with occasional real crystals of calcium lactate as amuse-dents.

In Italy Parmesan has relatives like the more widespread Grana Padano and - photo 5

In Italy Parmesan has relatives, like the more widespread Grana Padano, and respectable alternatives, notably the saltier and sharper Pecorino Romano. Outside Europe Parmigiano Reggiano (its modern appellation) has imitators, avoided by the observant eater because they can never rival Parmesans unique organoleptic trait, its faint and appetizing odour of babys vomit.

Reblochon comes from a territory with a long cheese history, the duchy of Savoy. With a foot on both sides of the high Alps and its capital at Chambry, fifteenth-century Savoy boasted not only a ducal cook who balanced the merits of Brie against those of local cheese for his banquets, but also a ducal physician and author of Summa Lacticiniorum, the first book in the world dedicated wholly to cheese, a book in which the best Italian and French kinds are coolly evaluated and are not overshadowed by the many types already produced in the valleys of Savoy.

Reblochon itself has little recorded history. It emerges from one of those many cheese legends: that the Alpine cowmen once had their taxes calculated on the number of pails of milk their herds produced; so it paid them to do a first milking when the landlord was about and a second milking after dark. True or false? Reblochon (from Savoyard reblocher, to give a second squeeze) is indeed the result of the late milking, low in volume, rich in cream. Produced in narrowvalleys and on high summer pastures on both sides of the high Alps, it began to make a name for itself in the 1870s, when Savoy had been divided between France and Italy, when the railways were bringing tourists to the mountains and mountain cheeses to Paris.

Yet there is a tantalizing prehistory for the foolhardy historian to attach to Reblochon. Nineteen hundred years agoin Tarentaise, the same Alpine district where Reblochon is now made, the tribe named Ceutrones had just been conquered by the Romans. They began to export their cheese to Rome. Named Vatusicus caseus, it was first noticed, around AD 70, by the encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder. Of all the cheeses available at Rome, Vatusicus was the only one praised by Galen in his survey of The Properties of Foods. It was not hard, or aged, or sharp, or indigestible: it was somehow a fresh cheese, even after its long journey to Rome, and necessarily a very expensive one. Might Reblochon, with its mild, milky, mountain-cowshed flavour sealed inside its firm rind, descend directly from the Vatusicus of the early Roman Empire? However that may be, Reblochon today is a full-cream, unpasteurized, soft cheese, exclusively from the milk of three local breeds. A ripe disc of Reblochon, matured for about three weeks, yields to a squeeze; the interior will sag but not run when cut, and will have the creamy, warm, intimate smell of the milk that the landlord never tasted.

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