Note: This edition of The Cheese Cookbook has been updated to include Metric equivalents.
The true cheese-lover can get pleasure from simply reading about cheese, as a musician derives excitement from reading a score. For most of us, however, the joy of cheese is in the tasting. An English gourmet once said that “the only way to learn about cheese is to eat it,” and for some 4,000 years of recorded history people have been doing just that.
No one knows just how or when cheese was discovered. The ancient Greeks esteemed it so highly that they believed it to be a gift of the gods. Legend has it that it was discovered quite by accident when an Arab traveler carried as part of his food supply on a journey across the desert some milk in a crude container fashioned from a sheep’s stomach. By some happy chance the heat of the day and the rennet still remaining in the container caused the milk to separate into curds and whey. The whey satisfied the traveler’s thirst and the curd his appetite—and so cheese was born.
Few foods equal cheese for nutritive value and variety of flavor and texture. More than 350 different cheeses have been cataloged and described, oftentimes in accents of rapture. Cheese is produced and prized around the world. It serves more purposes than can be listed here. It can be used as appetizer, entree or dessert, and the magic of its flavor—its many flavors—combines enchantingly with many other foods. Cooking with cheese is a fascinating and rewarding adventure. Success is certain if two simple rules are kept in mind: As a protein food, cheese requires a low temperature; and it must not be overcooked.
Man has been making cheese since recorded history began, and probably longer. In different parts of the world, different kinds of milk and different methods of handling the cheese have produced many different and distinctive types. As people of many races came to the United States, they brought the knowledge of and the taste for native cheeses with them. As a result, many kinds of cheese which originated in many lands are today being produced in this country, and a good many of them are also imported from their native lands and made available to American homemakers.
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