We can only guess at when the craft of cheese-making began, but it is one of the most ancient forms of manufactured food. Cheese making equipment dating back as far as 3000 BC has been found in Europe and Egypt.

However, it is thought that cheese could go as far back as 10,000 BC when sheep and goats were first domesticated and early herdsmen would have found that sour milk naturally separates into curds and whey, the solid curd providing an edible and nourishing food.

The Romans ate cheese and it is possibly they who learnt of the use of rennet and that by using the stomach of a calf in which to store milk, the milk would have solidified due to the enzymes in the stomach. This would have solidified the milk more quickly than natural souring and would have given the curd a much better flavour and with the addition of salt the cheese would be preserved for a longer period.

 

It is thought that after the collapse of the Roman Empire that the ancient art of cheesemaking was gradually forgotten, that is except in the remote monasteries and it is they we have to thank for carrying on the old traditional cheesemaking methods and for developing other types of cheeses such as washed rind.

In the 19th Century the next major influence on cheesemaking was pasteurisation and the use of scientific methods for testing the acidity of the milk in the cheesemaking process. This allowed cheese to be made on a larger scale and also to reduce wastage. The Second World War saw the decline of the small cheesemakers and the large scale producers took over.

However, there is a revival of the small Artisan cheesemakers as more and more farmers are diversifying and taking up the art of cheesemaking and adapting some of the ancient recipes to meet today’s standards.

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