The History of Cheese 101 (TIMELINE AND FACTS)

The discovery of cheese by our ancestors is by accident (albeit a happy one) since there was no science back then.

Any milk left to warm by a fire or stored in a sack made from the stomach of an animal would have soured, causing the milk solids (the curds) and liquid (the whey) to coagulate and separate, allowing a man to learn that his most precious commodity, milk, could be preserved in the form of cheese, and eventually, that rennet, an enzyme found in the stomach of the milk-producing animal, was the coagulant.

The Legend Of The First Cheeses

According to legend, an Arab shepherd carrying a sheep’s flask full of milk had to walk home beneath the scorching desert sun. When he got home he realized his milk had solidified.

In other words, the milk has curdled and cheese was born.

Other stories abound and whoever ‘invented’ cheese or wherever it ‘originated’ is pretty much still a mystery.

A Summary of Cheese History (BC Era)

Cheese History Timeline (BC – Before Christ Era)

8500 BC

Goats in the Fertile Crescent were the first livestock to be domesticated by humans early in the Neolithic Revolution. However, they were initially raised for meat and fiber, not milk.

7000 BC

Cattle were first domesticated in Western Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).

6500 BC

After generations of livestock breeding and domestication – coupled with a population explosion in the Levant that depleted resources – people turn to milking sheep, cows, and goats as a food source that utilizes grazing lands not suited for crops. Around the same time, pottery-making techniques are developed thereby allowing humans to store milk, ferment it, and drain off whey. This development opened up the possibility of cheesemaking.

5000 BC

Mesopotamian mosaics dating to 5000 BC and Sumerian documents dating to 3000 BC show the existence of about twenty different cheeses at these times. (Source)

4500 BC

By the time 4500 BC arrived, the cheesemaking culture that originated in the Fertile Crescent has taken hold across Europe, in the Mediterranean, and through Western Asia down to India.

3000 BC

Faisselles (straining molds) have been discovered in Greece and Sicily.

2000 BC

The Hittites in central Anatolia included a fight with cheeses – as weapons, not opponents – as part of the entertainment at one of their religious festivals.

150 BC

The Romans produced the earliest recorded smoked cheese, with the best wheels found in, and named for, the Velabrum, the city’s bustling food marketplace.

A Summary of Cheese History (AD Era)

Cheese History Timeline (AD – Anno Domini or the Common Era)

Year 774

Cheese had a major breakthrough in 774. Brie de Meaux, produced on farmsteads around Abbaye du Jouare outside Paris, earns an important fan: the emperor Charlemagne, who placed regular orders for the iconic soft-ripened cheese.

Year 1135

The first appearance in writings of the word formaticus, would become fourmage (fourteenth century), fromaige (fifteenth century), and finally fromage (French for cheese today).

Year 1184

Gouda, a cheese that would become synonymous with the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, first enters the historical record.

Late 13th Century

The earliest record of a macaroni-and-cheese type dish appears in the anonymously authored Neapolitan cookbook Liber de Coquina, the dish was called de lasanis (which sounds awfully similar to lasagna) according to the writer Clifford A. Wright. The dish consists of boiled squares of fermented pasta dough tossed with grated cheese.

1585

Following Spanish colonization, the first cheeses were produced in Mexico, using sheep’s milk.

1623

The first dairy cows arrived in what is now the United States of America, brought along with East Anglian colonizers to Plymouth Colony.

1831

French inventor Nicolas Appert discovered the process called ‘appertisation,’ a precursor to pasteurization. The process of heating milk in an airtight container makes it easier to preserve.

1854

A big discovery by French Biologist, Louis Pasteur, uncovers that yeasts are responsible for fermentation and that heating products like wine, beer, and milk could halt microbial activity without damaging flavor and quality.

1919

Cabot Creamery, the farmer-owned New England dairy famed for its cheddar, was founded in Vermont.

1937

Kraft Dinner’s first mac-and-cheese boxed product consisting of noodles with a package of grated cheese attached made its debut in the United States.

1964

The United States was introduced to Swiss fondue at The New York World’s Fair – the tradition of enjoying crusty bread dipped in warm, luscious melted Alpine cheese.

1970s to 1980s

Powerful women like Judy Schad (Capriole), Mary Keene (Cypress Grove), Alison Hooper (Vermont Butter and Cheese), and Laura Chenel (Laura Chenel’s Chèvre) pioneered a new era in American cheesemaking.

2018

The world’s oldest cheese (that is around 3,200 years old) was discovered by Archaeologists from the University of Catania and the University of Cairo in the tomb of Ptahmes (the tomb of an Egyptian high-ranking official).

Conclusion

These are the facts and timeline of the history of cheese in a nutshell. This page will be consistently updated to keep up with the latest breakthroughs in the world of cheese.

Thanks for reading.

Check out our previous post: 35 Words Every Cheese Lover Should Know (TERMS)

The timeline on this post was mostly derived from Stuff Every Cheese Lover Should Know by Alexandra Jones. It is a small book that I’d highly recommend every cheese lover and connoisseur to have.