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Overview
Whether you want to make Welsh Rarebit, Cheese Puffs, Fondue, and Camembert Savory or you want to learn more about British and Wisconsin Cheddars, Stilton, Emmentaler, Brick, Samsoe, Brie, Munster, Gorgonzola, and all the other fine cheeses of the world, you will find this guide an enjoyable and helpful companion.
T. A. Layton, a noted British expert on cheese and wine, explores fascinating cheese legends and history, with separate chapters on the cheese in literature, how cheese is made, and the gastronomy of cheese. He also offers information on the buying, storing, and serving of cheese, in addition to hot and cold cheese recipes from around the world. The second part of the book profiles the cheeses, country by country, with details of all the original varieties and familiar imitations. Professional and amateur gourmets will prize these informal and enlightening discussions of more than 250 cheese varieties as well as the selection of 100 delectable recipes.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486229553 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 11/18/2015 |
| Edition description: | Reissue |
| Pages: | 160 |
| Sales rank: | 649,433 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Cheese Handbook
A Guide to the World's Best Cheeses Over 250 Varieties Described, with Recipes
By T. A. Layton
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1973 Dover Publications, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-22955-3
CHAPTER 1
Cheese in Literature
They say it was invented by accident; a merchant from Arabia put his day's supply of milk into a pouch made of a sheep's stomach, hoisted himself upon his camel and clip-clopped over the desert. The beast's ambling movement, the rennet in the lining of the pouch and the hot sun did the rest. That evening the first drink of whey quenched the nomad's thirst and his hunger was satisfied by the curd — cheese was born.
Records show that it was a food over 5,000 years ago; certainly it was made and eaten in Biblical times. It is first mentioned in the first book of Samuel when Saul goes to do battle with the Philistines. David is told by his father Jesse to take sustenance to his brethren: "And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand." Then again in Samuel, David is given food by Shobi and others, "And honey and butter and sheep and cheese of kine for David and for the people that were with him to eat".
In the first quotation it says "these ten cheeses of milk", in both instances the word is qualified in such a way that one wonders whether a cow's milk cheese was considered superior to that of any other or if some other food was also given the name of cheese.
Then Job says, "Thou has poured me out as milk, and curdled me as cheese".
Virgil is always mentioning cheeses. "Yet this night you might have rested here with me on this green leafage. We have ripe apples, mealy chestnuts and a wealth of pressed cheese." Again, "There are little cheeses too, dried in a basket of rushes."
But Virgil's longest reference is in his Moretum, a long poem devoted almost entirely to describing how a peasant makes a dish out of herbs, garlic and salt cheese: "Near his hearth a larder hung from the ceiling; gammons and slices of bacon dried and salted were wanting, but old cheeses, their rounded surface pierced midway with rushes, were suspended in baskets of close-woven fennel."
A fair number of references to cheese appear in The Deipnosophists, which can loosely be translated The Gastronomes. It is by Athenaeus of Naucratis, a town on the left side of the Nile. It was written around A.D. 200 and its interest today lies mainly in the references which are made to early Greek manners and especially — since the whole fifteen books are the record of conversation at a single banquet — of food and table manners.
Sicily was then the great place for cheese; it came from Tromileii in Achea. In a play called The Sicilian Philomer says, "I used to think that Sicily could make just this one speciality, its fine cheese".
There was also a cheese, which Zeus drank, called Opias, curdled with fig juice, probably of cream curd consistency.
Cheese was also used to put over meat before it went into the oven.
But like a beauteous paunch of gelded pig
Well boild and white, and basted with rich cheese
says Sopater.
Smoked cheese was eaten, so was green cheese (in colour that is), and a delicious kind of bread was seasoned with aniseed, cheese and oil.
Cheese was used in a remarkable dish called a Myma (which may well have resembled a haggis) in which any kind of meat cut up in small pieces, ham, onions, common peeled onions, coriander, raisins, silphium (a Mediterranean plant yielding gum resin much prized by the ancients), vinegar, dried thyme and toasted cheese were all mashed up in blood.
Cheese was especially an end dish; a delicacy belonging to the drinking bout and both Athenaeus and Petronius refer to epideipnides or last courses.
Lucius Apuleius (born A.D. 123) in his book The Golden Ass, mentions cheese also: "... while I did greedily put in my mouth a great morsel of barley fried with cheese, it stuck so fast, being soft and doughy, in the passage of my throat, that I was well nigh choked." He also tells us that Hypata, the principal city of Thessaly, was the place for "fresh cheeses of exceeding good taste and relish", so much so that merchants used to journey there to buy cheese and honey for resale.
Perhaps the most important proof of the importance of cheese — and this as far back as 300 B.C. — can be found in a reference to cooking utensils used in that epoch in a play by Anaxippus who was alive around that time. "Bring a soup ladle, a dozen skewers, a meat hook, mortar, small cheese scraper, skillet ..."
As for cheese cakes, these were all the rage. The island of Samos was famous for them. Athenaeus even gives recipes: "Take some cheese and pound it, put in a brazen sieve and strain it, then add honey and flour made from spring wheat and heat the whole together into one mass."
The nicest must have been tuniai, which were cheese cakes fried in oil on to which was poured honey. Mayris, a playwright of the Old Comedy era 500 B.c. in his Bacchus says: "Have you ne'er seen fresh tuniai hissing when you pour honey over them?"
The cheese cake was considered as the most suitable food to eat at a wedding feast. At Argos for example the bride was in the habit of bringing the bridegroom cheese cakes which were roasted and served — with honey — to the bridegroom' s friends.
There was also a cheese cake called glycinas much in fashion among Cretans, made with sweet wine and olive oil.
DERIVATION OF THE WORD
In Dutch the word is Kaas. In German, Kase. In Irish, Cais. In Welsh, Caws. In Portuguese, Queijo. In Spanish, Queso. And all are from the Latin Caseus, which even then also stood for a comic term of endearment.
In English it was Cese or Cyse before A.D. 100. Then in the twelfth century it was Cease or Coese and in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries became schese, chease, cheise, chies and ches.
"An cyse an buteran ic do," says Aelfric before A.D. 1000. William Langland in his Piers Plowman talks of "A weye of Essex chese" in 1377.
In the Lambet Homilies of u75 "penni per mon wule tilden his musetoch he bindeth uppon pa swike chese". "Swike" by the way is treacherous.
By about the fourteenth century different types of cheeses were beginning to be recognised: Piers Plowman talks of "Twa grene cheeses" referring not to the colour, but to their state of unripeness.
In the fifteenth century we have one of the first references to more mature cheeses. John Russell, sometime Usher and Marshal to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, wrote his famous Boke of Nurture which was published round 146o. It is a Mrs. Beeton and a How to Behave at Parties Manual rolled into one and here he avers that "Hard chese ... wille a stom kepe ... open" — a laxative in fact.
Between 1500 and 1600 we have the first really useful references to cheese-mg in the English language.
Andrew Boorde, having in 540 published The Boke for to lerne a man to be a wyse in buylding of his town, followed this up two years later with A Compendious regyment or a dyetary of helth. He tells us that "There is iiii sorts of chese. Grene chese, softe chese, harde chese and Spermyse. Grene chese is not called grene by reason of the colour, but for the newnes of it, for the whey is not halfe pressed out of it."
Spermyse is the word now obsolete for a kind of cheese which Boorde says "is made with Curdes and the juice of herbes" and very good it sounds too.
Boorde gives us in roundabout way the first reference to the Welshmen's fondness for toasted cheese — in other words the Welsh Rarebit.
Fynde wryten amonge olde jestes how God made St. Peter porter of heven. And that God in his goodness suffred many men to come to the Kyngdome with small deserving. At which tyme, there was in heven a grete company of Wekhmen which with their reyrakynge and babelyne trobelyd all the others. Wherefore God says to St. Peter that he was wery of them and he would fayne have them out of heven. To whom St. Peter sayde "Good Lorde I warrant you that shall be shortly done". Wherefore St. Peter went outside of heven gayts and cryd with a loude voice, "Cause Babel Cause Babe!" that is as moche as to say "Rosty'd chese!" which thynge the Welchmen herying ran out of heven a gretefull. And St. Peter went into Heven and Jokkyd the dore! and so aparyd all the Welchmen out!
Andrew Boorde also gives us one of the first recipes for cheese cakes: "Take raw chese and grynde it fayne in mortar with eggs. Put powder thereto of sugar. Colour with safrone and put in cofyns (pie crust cases) and bake it."
Next comes Thomas Tusser, the likeable failure. He was described by Thomas Fuller in his History of the Worthies of England (1661) as "successively a musician, schoolmaster, serving-man, husbandman, grazer, poet, more skilful in all than thriving in any vocation. He traded in oxen, sheep, dairies, grain of all kinds to no profit ... yet hath he laid down excellent rules."
The rules referred to are in Tusser's book Fieve hundreth pointes of good husbandrie published in 573 and the cheese section is in "April's Husbandry" which ends with "A lesson for Dairy- Maid Cislcy", in the form of ten faults to avoid when making cheese.
It should not be:
(1) Whitish and dry like Gehazi stricken with leprosy.
(2) Too salt like Lot's wife.
(3) Too full of eyes like Argus.
(4) Leathery like Cobblers' stuff.
(5) Hoven and puffed like Cobblers' stuff.
(6) Spotty or lazar-like.
(7) Full of whey or maudlin.
(8) Too scrawling (old English for crawling) with mites.
(9) Too hairy like Esau.
(10) Nor burnt to the pan.
Tusser put all this into a jingle so that Cisley could remember her work better.
Leave Lot with her pillar, good Cisley, alone,
Much saltness in white meat is all for the stone.
If cheese in dairy have Argus's eyes,
Tell Cisley the fault in her huswifery lies.
Rough Esau was hairy, from top to the foot,
If cheese so appeareth call Cisley a slut.
Shakespeare has most of his references to cheese in the Merry Wives of Windsor.
"You Banbury cheese!" says Bardolph to Slender and this confirms the theory that this cheese was known for its thinness.
"Like a Banbury cheese nothing but paring" is a remark in Jacks Drum Entertainment by John Marston in 1600.
Note again the supposed Welshman's fondness for cheese. Says Ford, "I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae or a thief to walk my ambling gelding than my wife with herself."
The rest of Shakespeare's cheese references are:
MERRY WIVES
Evans: I pray you be gone. I will make an end of my dinner. There's pippins and cheese to come.
Nym: Adieu. I love not the humour of bread and cheese, and there's the humour of it.
Falstaff: Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese.
Falstaff: Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese.
I HENRY IV
Hotspur: I had rather live with cheese and garlic in a windmill, far Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me in any summer house in Christendom .
HENRY V
Nym: It will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man's sword will; and there's an end.
HENRY VI
Smith: Nay John it will be stinking low, for his breath stinks with eating toasted cheese.
TROILUS AND CRESIDA
Achilles: Art thou come ? Why my cheese, my digestion....
Thersites: ... that stale old mouse-eaten cheese Nestor.
ALL'S WELL
Parolles: Virginity breeds mites much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
KING LEAR
Lear: Look look a mouse. Peace peace, this piece of toasted cheese will do it.
Pepys in his diary has an interesting reference to cheese; in his Diary for March 2, 1663:
There also coming into the river two Dutchmen, we sent a couple of men on board and brought three Holland cheeses, cost 4d. a piece, excellent cheeses.
Although the story of the Arabian and his sheep's stomach is tenable, it does conflict with the meaning of the curious old Anglo-Saxon word Cheeselip. The lip part (or lyb, lepe, lypp, lib) comes from the Gothic word Lubjaleisei which meant witchcraft or poison herb lore. In Old Icelandic Lyf meant medicinal herb, in Old English Lybb meant poison, while in modern German dialect Lüpp means rennet. And so it has been conjectured that originally rennet 1 was some herb juice. Indeed the wild flower Gulium verum, because of its property of coagulating milk, has the popular name of Cheese-Rennet as well as Lady's Bedstraw.
By half-way through the seventeenth century, English writers were beginning to make mention of cheeses from the Continent. Thus Thomas Muffet, Doctor in Physick, in his Health's Improvement (1655) mentions that Parmesan is excellent and evidently believes that it was this cheese which sustained Zoroaster. "Was not that a great cheese, think you, wherewith Zoroaster lived in the Wilderness twenty years together without any other meat ?" Although he may have got pretty tired of it, so far as the keeping powers are concerned the feat is feasible, for Parmesans have been known to keep much longer than this — see Part II.
By 1700 the various English counties were making their own individual cheeses, or more accurately the recipes for making them, or descriptions of them, were coming into print. Wiltshire cheese was in the form of a truckle and was very good.
Suffolk cheese did not have a happy reputation; Suffolk Bang it was dubbed, also Suffolk Thump. In 1794 when other cheese was 5d., Suffolk was 3½d.; and Pepys says, "I found my wife vexed at her people for grumbling to eat Suffolk cheese."
Essex cheese was unpopular too; both of these counties have had the following rhyme ascribed to their cheese. It is seventeenth century:
They that made me were uncivil
For they made me harder than the devil
Knives won't cut me fire won't sweat me
Dogs bark at me but won't eat me.
By the 1760s the cheesemaker was recognised officially, and by then, too, the practice of stamping a cheese was being widely practised. Parson Woodeforde records that a big cheese arrived with the King's Arms embossed on its side. At this time, too, the Ramequin or Ramakin was becoming increasingly popular: "small slices of breadcrumb covered with a farce made of pounded cheese, eggs and other ingredients and baked in a pie dish." We wonder what the "other ingredients" were to which Parson Woodeforde refers, but in any event, we consider this to be one of the few dishes in existence which is near perfect either as a hot hors d'oeuvres or as a savoury.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Cheese Handbook by T. A. Layton. Copyright © 1973 Dover Publications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
PART I — CHEESE IN GENERAL,I. Cheese in Literature, 9,
II. How Cheese is Made, 23,
III. Buying, Storing, Keeping and Serving Cheese, 33,
IV. Cheese Dishes, Hot and Cold, 38,
V. The Gastronomy of Cheese, 55,
PART II — CHEESES BY COUNTRIES,
America, 69,
Argentina, 73,
Australia, 73,
Austria, 73,
Belgium, 73,
Brazil, 74,
Canada, 74,
Chile, 75,
Czechoslovakia, 75,
Denmark, 75,
Egypt, 78,
Finland, 78,
France, 79,
Germany, 101,
Great Britain, 103,
Greece, 118,
Holland, 118,
Hungary, 119,
India, 120,
Ireland, 120,
Italy, 120,
Japan, 124,
Mexico, 125,
New Zealand, 125,
Norway, 125,
Portugal, 126,
Spain, 127,
Sweden, 127,
Switzerland, 128,
Turkey, 132,
Venezuela, 132,
Yugoslavia, 132,
Appendix I — Additional Cheese Varieties, 135,
Appendix II — Additional Cheese Recipes, 138,
Index of Cheeses, 155,