History of cheese

[1][2][3] Humans likely developed cheese and other dairy foods by accident, as a result of storing and transporting milk in bladders made of ruminants' stomachs, as their inherent supply of rennet would encourage curdling.

There is no conclusive evidence indicating where cheese-making originated, possibly Europe, or Central Asia, the Middle East, or the Sahara.

The earliest direct evidence for cheesemaking is now being found in excavated clay sieves (holed pottery) over seven thousand years old, for example in Kujawy, Poland,[4] and the Dalmatian coast in Croatia, the latter with dried remains which chemical analysis suggests was cheese.

[1][2][3] Shards of holed pottery were also found in Urnfield pile-dwellings on Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland and are hypothesized to be cheese-strainers;[5] they date back to roughly eight thousand years ago.

Curdling milk in an animal's stomach made solid and better-textured curds, which could easily have led to the conscious addition of rennet.

[citation needed] The earliest written evidence of cheese is in the Sumerian cuneiform texts of the Third Dynasty of Ur, dated at the early second millennium BC.

[17] Earlier, remains identified as cheese were found in the funeral meal in an Egyptian tomb dating around 2900 BC.

Homer's Odyssey (late 8th century BC) describes the Cyclops producing and storing sheep's and goat's milk and cheese: We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went inside and took stock of all that we could see.

His cheese-racks were loaded with cheeses, and he had more lambs and kids than his pens could hold [...] When he had so done he sat down and milked his ewes and goats, all in due course, and then let each of them have her own young.

Columella's De Re Rustica (c. 65 CE) details a cheese-making process involving rennet coagulation, pressing of the curd, salting, and aging.

Pliny's Natural History (77 CE) devotes two chapters (XI, 96–97) to the diversity of cheeses enjoyed by Romans of the early Empire.

Charlemagne's first encounter with an edible rind white cheese forms one of the constructed anecdotes of Notker's Life of the Emperor.

It became a staple of long-distance commerce,[26] was disregarded as peasant fare,[27] inappropriate on a noble table, and even harmful to one's health through the Middle Ages.

[29] Variations on this sentiment were long repeated and NASA exploited this myth for an April Fools' Day spoof announcement in 2006.

Mainstream Chinese culture is not dairy-centric, but some outlying regions of the country including Yunnan have strong cheese traditions.

Until its modern spread along with European culture, cheese was most common by far in Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa.