Laura Martinez - The Everything Cheese Book From Cheddar to Chevre, All You Need to Select and Serve the Finest Fromage

Rennet is a broad term used to refer to substances that make milk curds coagulate. Throughout history, many different forms of rennet have been used: enzymes from animals, plant extracts, and fungus extracts. Today, manufactured enzymes are also available. No matter what type of rennet is used, most cheese makers today buy rennet in liquid or powder form from dairy-supply companies.

By 5000 B.C. many people throughout what is now the Mediterranean and the Middle East had shifted from nomadic to domesticated life and maintained herds of sheep and goats. Two thousand years later, in 3000 B.C., the Sumerians, who were the earliest settlers of Mesopotamia, recorded their activities on clay tablets, using pictures, and within these tablets are descriptions of twenty different types of cheese. While King Shoulgi ruled the Sumerians, cheese making was included as part of the records on food production, and clay tablets have been found that record an eight-year cheese history. In the beginning, 8 liters of cheese were made in one year. Eight years later, 63.3 liters of cheese were produced. This first real evidence of cheese in civilization certainly seems sophisticated enough to suggest that cheese-making procedures were already advanced beyond any beginning stage. From there, cheese making branches out all along the northern tip of Africa, and into southern Europe.

The Egyptians definitely knew about cheese. An excavation of King Horaha's tomb, dated at 2300 B.C., revealed the remains of cheese. Cheese was sold at markets in Babylonia, and in 1600 B.C. King Hammurabi II established a Code of the Amorite to regulate taxes on dairy food, including cheese.

The Basque claim that some of their cheese recipes are 4,000 years old, which means cheese making began in that area around 2000 B.C. And, cheese appears among some of the first writings about ancient civilization. According to Homer's Illiad, the serving woman Hecamede healed Prince Machaon's Trojan War wounds with a mixture of wine and grated goat's-milk cheese. And Pliny the Elder, a first century B.C. scholar, soldier, and author of numerous volumes chronicling wars between the Romans and Germans, credits a twenty-year cheese diet for the Iranian prophet Zoroaster's eloquence. The earliest days of Rome included cheese; in fact, separate kitchens were devoted to perfecting the art of making, smoking, and ripening it.

As civilization progressed in the form of Greek colonies, the Golden Age of Athens, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, the rise and fall of Carthage, and the birth of Christ, cheese not only survived, it also became a dietary staple throughout the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, the British Isles, and most of what is now called Europe. The only area it did not survive in was China, and for that some credit can probably be given to Confucius, who believed and taught that spoiled food was unhygienic. He likely viewed soured milk as spoiled milk. Since the Chinese did not have ready access to fresh milk or preserved milk products, some believe this was the beginning of a historically high number of Chinese with lactose intolerance.

From most accounts, the centuries between A.D. 200 and A.D. 600, the Dark Ages, were mostly ones of meager survival, and certainly not a time when it was safe to graze animals and produce food without fear of destruction. During this time, cheese followed a couple of different paths, one associated with war, the other with peace. It fed the Barbarians the Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Gepids, Alemanni, and Franks, who survived primarily on cheese, meat, and milk while they plundered the continent and it fed the monks, who quietly retreated to their monasteries where they spent lots of time growing and producing food. In fact, Benedictine and Cistercian monks, who saved many people from starvation during these years, became such extraordinary cheese makers that many of their recipes are still made today.