Cheese
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Cheese is a solid food made from the curdled milk of cows, goats, sheep, or other mammals. The milk is curdled using some combination of rennet (or rennet substitutes) and acidification. Bacteria acidify the milk and play a role in defining the texture and flavor of most cheeses. Some cheeses also feature molds, either on the outer rind or throughout.
There are hundreds of types of cheese. Different styles and flavors of cheese are the result of using different species of bacteria and molds, different levels of milk fat, variations in length of aging, differing processing treatments (cheddaring, pulling, brining, mold wash) and different breeds of cows, sheep, or other mammals. Other factors include animal diet and the addition of flavoring agents such as herbs, spices, or wood smoke. Whether or not the milk is pasteurized may also affect the flavor.
For a few cheeses, the milk is curdled by adding acids such as vinegar or lemon juice. Most cheeses, however, are acidified to a lesser degree by bacteria, which turn milk sugars into lactic acid, followed by the addition of rennet to complete the curdling. Rennet is an enzyme traditionally obtained from the stomach lining of young cattle, but now also laboratory produced. Substitute "vegetable rennets" have been extracted from various species of the Cynara thistle family.
In some societies, stored cheese is a hedge against famine and a good travel food. It is valuable for its portability, long life, and high content of fat, protein, calcium, and phosphorus. Cheese is lighter-weight, more compact, and has a longer shelf life than the milk from which it is made. Cheesemakers can place themselves near the center of a dairy region and benefit from fresher milk, lower milk prices, and lower shipping costs. Cheese's substantial storage life lets a cheesemaker sell when prices are high or money is needed. Some markets even pay more for "aged" cheeses, exactly the opposite case from conventional milk production.
Cheeses are eaten raw or cooked, alone or with other ingredients. As they are heated, most cheeses melt and brown. Some cheeses, like raclette, melt smoothly; many others can be coaxed into doing so in the presence of acids or starch. Fondue, with wine providing the acidity, is a good example of a smoothly-melted cheese dish. Other cheeses turn elastic and stringy when they melt, a quality that can be enjoyed in dishes like pizza and Welsh rarebit. Some cheeses melt unevenly, their fats separating as they heat, while a few acid-curdled cheeses, including halloumi, paneer and ricotta, do not melt at all and can become firmer when cooked.
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History
Cheese is an ancient food whose origins may predate recorded history. Probably discovered in Central Asia or the Middle East, cheesemaking spread to Europe and had become a sophisticated enterprise by Roman times. As Rome's influence receded, local cheesemaking techniques diverged from one another and each region became home to specific types of cheese. This diversity reached its peak in the early industrial age and has declined somewhat since then due to mechanization and economic factors.
Origins
The exact origins of cheesemaking are unknown, and estimates range from around 8000 BCE (when sheep were domesticated) to around 3000 BCE. Credit for the discovery most likely goes to nomadic Turkic tribes in Central Asia, around the same time that they developed yogurt, or to people in the Middle East. A common tale about the discovery of cheese tells of an Arab nomad carrying milk across the desert in a container made from an animal's stomach, only to discover the milk had separated into curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach.
Folktales aside, cheese likely began as a way of preserving soured and curdled milk through pressing and salting, with rennet introduced later— perhaps when someone noticed that cheese made in an animal stomach produced more solid and better-textured curds. The earliest archaeological evidence of cheesemaking has been found in Egyptian tomb murals, dating to about 2300 BCE. The earliest cheeses would likely have been quite sour and salty, similar in texture to rustic cottage cheese or feta.
From the Middle East, basic cheesemaking found its way into Europe, where cooler climates meant less aggressive salting was needed for preservation. With moderate salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for a variety of beneficial microbes and molds, which are what give aged cheeses their pronounced and interesting flavors.
Classical times
Ancient Greek mythology credited Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese. Homer's Odyssey (8th century BCE) describes the Cyclops making and storing sheep's and goats' milk cheese. From Samuel Butler's translation:
- 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. He curdled half the milk and set it aside in wicker strainers...
By Roman times, cheese was an everyday food and cheesemaking a mature art, not very different from what it is today. Columella's De Re Rustica (circa 65 CE) details a cheesemaking process involving rennet coagulation, pressing of the curd, salting, and aging. Pliny's Natural History (77 CE) devotes a chapter (xi. 97) to describing the diversity of cheeses enjoyed by Romans of the early Empire. He stated that the best cheeses came from the villages near Nîmes, but did not keep long and had to be eaten fresh. Cheeses of the Alps and Apennines were remarkable for their variety then as now. A Ligurian cheese was noted for being made mostly from sheeps' milk, and some cheeses produced nearby were stated to weigh as much as a thousand pounds each. Goats' milk cheese was a recent taste in Rome, improved over the "medicinal taste" of Gaul's similar cheeses by smoking. Of cheeses from overseas, Pliny preferred those of Bithynia in Asia Minor.
Post-classical Europe
Rome spread a uniform set of cheesemaking techniques throughout much of Europe, and introduced cheesemaking to areas without a previous history of it. As Rome declined and long-distance trade collapsed, cheese in Europe diversified further, with various locales developing their own distinctive cheesemaking traditions and products. France and Italy are the nations with the most diversity in locally made cheeses— today with approximately 400 each. (A French proverb says there is a different French cheese for every day of the year, and Charles de Gaulle once asked "how can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?"[1]) Still, the advancement of the cheese art in Europe was slow during the centuries after Rome's fall. Many of the cheeses we know best today were first recorded in the late Middle Ages or after— cheeses like cheddar around 1500 CE, Parmesan in 1597, Gouda in 1697, and Camembert in 1791.[2]
In 1546, John Heywood wrote in Proverbes that "the moon is made of a greene cheese." (Greene refers here not to the color, as many now think, but to being new or unaged.)[3] Variations on this sentiment were long repeated. Although some people assumed that this was a serious belief in the era before space exploration, it is more likely that Heywood was indulging in nonsense.
Modern era
The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in Switzerland in 1815, but it was in the United States where large-scale production first found real success. Credit usually goes to Jesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New York, who in 1851 started making cheese in an assembly-line fashion using the milk from neighboring farms. Within decades hundreds of such dairy associations existed.
The 1860s saw the beginnings of mass-produced rennet, and by the turn of the century scientists were producing pure microbial cultures. Before then, bacteria in cheesemaking had come from the environment or from recycling an earlier batch's whey; the pure cultures meant a more standardized cheese could be produced.
Factory-made cheese overtook traditional cheesemaking in the World War II era, and factories have been the source of most cheese in America and Europe ever since. Today, Americans buy more processed cheese than "real", factory-made or not.[4] Worldwide, cheese is a major agricultural product. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, over 18 million metric tons of cheese was produced worldwide in 2004. This is more than the yearly production of coffee beans, tea leaves, cocoa beans and tobacco combined.
Cultural attitudes
Cheese is rarely found in East Asian dishes, as dairy products in general are rare. However, East Asian sentiment against cheese is not universal. Cheese made from yaks' (chhurpi) or mares' milk is common on the Asian steppes, and cheese is used in India, where paneer curries are popular. Even in China, cheese consumption is increasing, with annual sales more than doubling from 1996 to 2003 (to a still quite-small 30 million U.S. dollars a year).[5] Certain kinds of Chinese preserved bean curd are sometimes misleadingly referred to in English as "Chinese cheese", due to their strong flavor.
Strict followers of the dietary laws of Judaism and Islam must avoid most hard cheeses, which are made with rennet from animals not slaughtered in a manner adhering to kosher or halal[6] laws. Both faiths allow cheese made with vegetable-based rennet or with rennet made from animals that were processed in a kosher or halal manner. Many less-orthodox Jews also believe that rennet undergoes enough processing to change its nature entirely, and do not consider it to ever violate kosher law. (See Cheese and kashrut.) As cheese is a dairy food under kosher rules it cannot be eaten in the same meal with any meat.
Many vegetarians avoid any cheese made from animal-based rennet. Most widely available vegetarian cheeses are made using rennet produced by fermentation of the fungus Mucor miehei. Vegans and other dairy-avoiding vegetarians cannot eat real cheese at all, but some vegetable-based substitute cheeses (usually soy based) are available.
Even in cultures with long cheese traditions, it is not unusual to find people who perceive cheese — especially pungent-smelling or mold-bearing varieties such as Limburger or Roquefort — as unappetizing, unpalatable, or disgusting. Food-science writer Harold McGee proposes that cheese is such an acquired taste because it is produced through a process of controlled spoilage and many of the odor and flavor molecules in an aged cheese are the same found in rotten foods. McGee notes "An aversion to the odor of decay has the obvious biological value of steering us away from possible food poisoning, so it's no wonder that an animal food that gives off whiffs of shoes and soil and the stable takes some getting used to."[7]
Types of cheese
- Main article: List of cheeses
No one categorization scheme can capture all the diversity of the world's cheeses. These are some commonly used classifications.
Fresh
For these simplest cheeses, milk is curdled and drained, with little other processing. Examples include Cottage cheese, Romanian Caş, Neufchâtel (the model for American-style cream cheese), and fresh goats' milk chèvre. Such cheeses are soft and spreadable, with a mild taste. Fresh cheeses without additional preservatives can spoil in a matter of days.
Whey cheeses are fresh cheeses made from the whey discarded while producing other cheeses. Ricotta, Romanian Urda and Norwegian Geitost are examples.
Traditional Mozzarella also falls into the fresh cheese category. Fresh curds are stretched and kneaded in hot water to form a ball of Mozzarella, which in southern Italy is usually eaten within a few hours of being made. Other firm fresh cheeses include paneer and queso fresco.
Distinctively aged
Soft-ripened cheeses such as Brie and Camembert are made by allowing white Penicillium candida or P. camemberti mold to grow on the outside of a soft cheese for a few days or weeks. The mold forms a white crust and contributes to the smooth, runny, or gooey textures and more intense flavors of these aged cheeses. Goats' milk cheeses are often treated in a similar manner, sometimes with white molds and sometimes with blue.
Blue-mold cheeses like Roquefort, Gorgonzola, and Stilton are produced by inoculating loosely pressed curds with Penicillium roqueforti or Penicillium glaucum molds. The mold grows within the cheese as it ages. These cheeses have distinct blue veins and, often, assertive flavors. Their texture can be soft or firm.
Washed-rind cheeses are periodically bathed in a saltwater brine as they age, making their surfaces amenable to a class of bacteria (the reddish-orange "smear bacteria") which impart pungent odors and distinctive flavors. Washed-rind cheeses can be soft (Limburger), semi-hard (Munster), or hard (Appenzeller).
Other categories
Categorizing cheeses by firmness is a common but inexact practice. The lines between "soft", "semi-soft", "semi-hard", and "hard" are arbitrary, and many types of cheese are made in softer or firmer variations. Harder cheeses have a lower moisture content than softer cheeses. They are generally packed into molds under more pressure and aged for a longer time.
The familiar cheddar is one of a family of semi-hard or hard cheeses (including Cheshire and Gloucester) whose curd is cut, gently heated, piled, and stirred before being pressed into forms. Colby and Monterey Jack are similar but milder cheeses; their curd is rinsed before it is pressed, washing away some acidity and calcium. A similar curd-washing takes place when making the Dutch cheeses Edam and Gouda.
Swiss-style cheeses like Emmental and Gruyère are generally quite firm. The same bacteria that give Emmental its holes contribute to their aromatic and sharp flavors. The hardest cheeses — "grating cheeses" such as Parmesan, Pecorino, and Romano — are quite firmly packed into large forms and aged for months or years.
Processed cheese is made from traditional cheese and emulsifiers, often with the addition of milk, more salt, preservatives, and food coloring. It is inexpensive, consistent, and melts smoothly. This is the most-consumed category of cheese in the United States. The most familiar processed cheese may be pre-sliced mild yellow American Cheese or Velveeta. Many other varieties exist, including Easy Cheese, a Kraft Foods brand sold in a spray can.
Health and nutrition
In general, cheese supplies a great deal of calcium, protein, and phosphorus. A 30 gram (one ounce) serving of cheddar cheese contains about seven grams of protein and 200 milligrams of calcium. Nutritionally, cheese is essentially concentrated milk: it takes about 200 grams (seven ounces) of milk to provide that much protein, and 150 grams to equal the calcium.[8]
Cheese shares milk's nutritional disadvantages as well. The Center for Science in the Public Interest condemns cheese as America's number one source of saturated fat, adding that the average American ate 30 pounds (13.6 kg) of cheese in the year 2000, up from 11 pounds (5 kg) in 1970.[9] Their recommendation is to limit full-fat cheese consumption to two ounces (60 grams) a week. Whether cheese's highly saturated fat actually leads to an increased risk of heart disease is called into question when considering France and Greece, which lead the world in cheese eating (more than 14 ounces (400 grams) a week per person, or over 45 pounds (20 kg) a year) yet have relatively low rates of heart disease.[10]
A number of food safety agencies around the world have warned of the risks of raw-milk cheeses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration states that soft raw-milk cheeses can cause "serious infectious diseases including listeriosis, brucellosis, salmonellosis and tuberculosis".[11] It is U.S. law since 1944 that all raw-milk cheeses (including imports since 1951) must be aged at least 60 days. Australia has a wide ban on raw-milk cheeses as well, though in recent years exceptions have been made for Swiss Gruyère, Emmental and Sbrinz, and for French Roquefort.[12] Some say these worries are overblown, pointing out that pasteurization of the milk used to make cheese does not ensure its safety in any case.[13] This is supported by statistics showing that in Europe (where young raw-milk cheeses are still legal in some countries), most cheese-related food poisoning incidents were traced to pasteurized cheeses.
Some studies claim to show that cheeses including Cheddar, Mozzarella, Swiss and American can help to prevent tooth decay.[14] Several mechanisms for this protection have been proposed:
- The calcium, protein, and phosphorus in cheese may act to protect tooth enamel.
- Cheese increases saliva flow, washing away acids and sugars.
- Cheese may have an antibacterial effect in the mouth.
Cheese is often avoided by those who are lactose intolerant, but ripened cheeses like Cheddar contain only about 5% of the lactose found in whole milk, and aged cheeses contain almost none.[15] Some people suffer reactions to amines found in cheese, particularly histamine and tyramine. Some aged cheeses contain significant concentrations of these amines, which can trigger symptoms mimicking an allergic reaction: headaches, rashes, and blood pressure elevations.
Making cheese
- Main article: Home cheesemaking
Curdling
The only strictly required step in making any sort of cheese is separating the milk into solid curds and liquid whey. Usually this is done by acidifying the milk and adding rennet. The acidification is accomplished directly by the addition of an acid like vinegar in a few cases (paneer, queso fresco), but usually starter bacteria are employed instead. These starter bacteria convert milk sugars into lactic acid. The same bacteria (and the enzymes they produce) also play a large role in the eventual flavor of aged cheeses. Most cheeses are made with starter bacteria from the Lactococci, Lactobacilli, or Streptococci families. Swiss starter cultures also include Propionibacter shermani, which produces carbon dioxide gas bubbles during aging, giving Swiss cheese or Emmental its holes.
Some fresh cheeses are curdled only by acidity, but most cheeses also use rennet. Rennet sets the cheese into a strong and rubbery gel compared to the fragile curds produced by acidic coagulation alone. It also allows curdling at a lower acidity—important because flavor-making bacteria are inhibited in high-acidity environments. In general, softer, smaller, fresher cheeses are curdled wi