Nowadays cheese

Ancient Greek mythology credited Aristaeus withkinds of cheese?" Still, the advancement of the
the discovery of cheese. Homer's Odyssey (8thcheese art in Europe was slow during the
century BCE) describes the Cyclops making andcenturies after Rome's fall. Many of the cheeses
storing sheep's and goats' milk cheese. Fromwe know best today were first recorded in the
Samuel Butler's translation:late Middle Ages or after— cheeses like
We soon reached his cave, but he was outcheddar around 1500 CE, Parmesan in 1597,
shepherding, so we went inside and took stock ofGouda in 1697, and Camembert in 1791.
all that we could see. His cheese-racks wereIn 1546, John Heywood wrote in Proverbes that
loaded with cheeses, and he had more lambs and"the moon is made of a greene cheese." (Greene
kids than his pens could hold...refers here not to the color, as many now think,
When he had so done he sat down and milked hisbut to being new or unaged.)[3] Variations on this
ewes and goats, all in due course, and then letsentiment were long repeated. Although some
each of them have her own young. He curdledpeople assumed that this was a serious belief in
half the milk and set it aside in wicker strainers...the era before space exploration, it is more likely
By Roman times, cheese was an everyday foodthat Heywood was indulging in nonsense.
and cheesemaking a mature art, not veryModern era
different from what it is today. Columella's De ReUntil its modern spread along with European
Rustica (circa 65 CE) details a cheesemakingculture, cheese was nearly unheard of in oriental
process involving rennet coagulation, pressing ofcultures, uninvented in the pre-columbian
the curd, salting, and aging. Pliny's Natural HistoryAmericas, and of only limited use in
(77 CE) devotes a chapter (XI, 97) to describingsub-mediterranean Africa, mainly being widespread
the diversity of cheeses enjoyed by Romans ofand popular only in Europe and areas influenced
the early Empire. He stated that the best cheesesstrongly by its cultures. But with the spread, first
came from the villages near Nîmes, but didof European imperialism, and later of
not keep long and had to be eaten fresh. CheesesEuro-American culture and food, cheese has
of the Alps and Apennines were as remarkablegradually become known and increasingly popular
for their variety then as now. A Ligurian cheeseworldwide, though still rarely considered a part of
was noted for being made mostly from sheep'slocal ethnic cuisine.
milk, and some cheeses produced nearby wereThe first factory for the industrial production of
stated to weigh as much as a thousand poundscheese opened in Switzerland in 1815, but it was
each. Goats' milk cheese was a recent taste inin the United States where large-scale production
Rome, improved over the "medicinal taste" offirst found real success. Credit usually goes to
Gaul's similar cheeses by smoking. Of cheesesJesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New
from overseas, Pliny preferred those of BithyniaYork, who in 1851 started making cheese in an
in Asia Minor.assembly-line fashion using the milk from
Post-classical Europeneighboring farms. Within decades hundreds of
Rome spread a uniform set of cheesemakingsuch dairy associations existed.
techniques throughout much of Europe, andThe 1860s saw the beginnings of mass-produced
introduced cheesemaking to areas without arennet, and by the turn of the century scientists
previous history of it. As Rome declined andwere producing pure microbial cultures. Before
long-distance trade collapsed, cheese in Europethen, bacteria in cheesemaking had come from
diversified further, with various locales developingthe environment or from recycling an earlier
their own distinctive cheesemaking traditions andbatch's whey; the pure cultures meant a more
products. France and Italy are the nations withstandardized cheese could be produced.
the most diversity in locally madeFactory-made cheese overtook traditional
cheeses— today with approximatelycheesemaking in the World War II era, and
400 each. (A French proverb holds there is afactories have been the source of most cheese
different French cheese for every day of thein America and Europe ever since. Today,
year, and Charles de Gaulle once asked "how canAmericans buy more processed cheese than
you govern a country in which there are 246"real", factory-made or not.