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See also: Blue Cheese, Roquefort Cheese, etc
CHEESE
Americans eat over half pound of cheese per person each week.
What appears to be the remains of cheese have been found in Egyptian tombs over 4,000 years old.
Cheese was popular in ancient Greece and Rome, but fresh milk and butter were not. This was probably due to the fact that olive oil was available in the Mediterranean area, where the climate would have spoiled milk and butter quickly.
Cheddar, Cheshire and Leicester cheeses have been colored with annatto seed for over 200 years. Carrot juice and marigold petals have also been used to color cheeses. Coloring may have originally been added to cheese made with winter milk from cows eating hay to match the orange hue (from vitamin A) of cheeses made with milk from cows fed on green plants.
The terms "Big Wheel" and "Big Cheese" originally referred to those who were wealthy enough to purchase a whole wheel of cheese.
Cheese takes up about 1/10 the volume of the milk it was made from.
Greek historian Xenophon (430?-355? B.C.) mentions that goat cheese had been known for centuries in Peloponnesus.
The first cheese factory to make cheese from scratch was started in Rome, New York in 1851 by Jesse Williams. He had his own dairy herd and purchased more milk from other local farmers to make his cheese. By combining the milk and making large cheeses he could produce cheese with uniform taste and texture. Before then, companies would buy small batches of home made cheese curd from local farmers to make into cheese, each batch of curds producing cheese with wide differences in taste and texture from one another.
Leicester cheese is a hard cheese similar to Cheddar. It is usually orange colored. Leicester's texture is crumbly, so it does not slice good, but it as great with dishes such as Welsh Rabbit.
Most people that are allergic to cow milk products or who are lactose intolerant can use goat and sheep milk products. The lactose or protein in the milk is what usually causes the allergic reaction or intolerance. Goat & sheep milk both have lactose and protein but it is of a different make up that doesn't bother most people.
The proteins in cow's milk are huge, fit for an animal that will one day weigh in over 500 lbs. The proteins in humans, sheep, and goats, are very short, which is why babies (the infirm, and arthritics) will often thrive on goat's milk, and raw goat's milk also is loaded with the enzymes that enable the metabolizing of the calcium.
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