◎ Wei Shuihua
In which country was the earliest cheese found in humans?
In which country was the world's first modern cheese factory built?
Is the largest cheese producing country in the world today a few traditional cheese countries in Britain, France and Italy?
How did the Black Death and the Great Voyage affect the rise and fall of cheese?
Today, I will give you a general knowledge lesson about Western civilization, and the protagonist is cheese. Is cheese important for us to understand Western culture? If the eastern agricultural civilization is inseparable from soy products, then the civilization developed from nomadism in the West is also indispensable to dairy products.
Former French President Charles de Gaulle once said with deep emotion: Who can govern a country with 258 kinds of cheese?
The distinction between dairy and legumes is the dividing line between nomadic and agrarian civilizations
Dairy products and soy products, in almost every taste niche, can derive the corresponding food. For example, tofu corresponding to sour cheese, stinky tofu corresponding to blue cheese, soybean oil corresponding to butter, dried tofu corresponding to raw and hard cooked cheese, tofu skin corresponding to cheese skin, tempeh seasoned with salty cheese, and curd milk corresponding to washed cheese...
Dairy and legumes, the stable labor by-products behind nomadic and agrarian civilizations, are the cheapest and most cost-effective sources of protein for humans in an era of insufficient meat supply. Based on these two basic ingredients, human beings have exhausted almost all their wisdom and invented a wide variety of well-structured dairy and soy product pedigrees.
The mouth is to the taste, and there is the same appetite. The strong correspondence between dairy products and soy products is not a coincidence, whether it is cheese, yogurt, cheese skin, or tofu, stinky tofu, tofu skin, they are all works that achieve a harmonious sense of chewiness, taste and fullness.
But from the perspective of the raw materials themselves, dairy products and legumes have a huge difference: how they are preserved. As plant seeds, pulses are extremely simple to preserve – dry, protected from light, and do not require much processing to adapt to long-term storage and transportation. After making soy products and then fermenting, more often just for the delicious taste brought by amino acids.
Dairy products, however, are quite different: raw milk deteriorates as quickly as five hours at room temperature. In an era when sterilization, logistics and preservation conditions were not developed, fermentation became the only way to extend the shelf life of dairy products. This is why most dairy products have the word "cheese". In English transliteration, they are all "cheese".
Obviously, the concept of cheese is not limited to the common side dishes in Western food, but a food category in which all human beings ferment-dehydrate dairy products for the simple purpose of preservation.
Cheese has never been a food that represents identity and status
For most Chinese, the first contact with the word "cheese" was in the cartoon Tom and Jerry, the food that the rats tried to get, a yellow, porous, triangular lump cheese.
In fact, although rodents are opportunistic animals and will not give up trying any kind of food, because the taste emitted by fermented dairy products is too strong, and the smell of mice is very sensitive, cheese is by no means the best choice for them. If given enough choices, rats would not choose cheese as food, preferring to eat higher-calorie carbohydrates such as grains, fruits, and candy.
Why, in many Western parables, plays, and novels, rats that steal food are bound to cheese? Obviously, in times when refrigeration is not possible, people prioritize better food storage and protection for grains and cured meats. Therefore, the cheese, which is extensively preserved, has become a helpless survival tool for hungry rats.
Conversely, people don't seem to be picky about cheese after microbial erosion, rodents and insects bite, and more often, they see it as part of the cheese flavor. In Sardinia, Italy, live maggots are deliberately injected into the cheese to promote fermentation and add flavor.
Rather than being a table style that reflects local folklore, it is better to think that taste memories from the ancestral era are still preserved in recipes in remote areas.
Cheese has never been a food that represents identity and status. More often, it is the product of a lack of materials and backward means of food preservation. For a long period of time, most people were not free to choose their favorite foods. The degree of civilization and the resources of property are the determinants of the dietary structure.
Europe, which has a glorious history of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, has a civilization development background comparable to that of China, and it also belongs to the production mode of fishing, hunting and animal husbandry supplemented by agriculture in the Central Plains of China, so Europe before the Middle Ages is very similar to China's eating habits. For example, according to the agricultural rhythm of sunrise and sunset, Europeans and Chinese used to eat only two meals a day. After waking up early for a while, eat brunch to replenish the energy consumed; eat the rest of the food before the end of the afternoon labor, which is convenient for lightly packing home after farming, and hoarding enough calories to cope with the cold night.
For example, agricultural products wheat, pork, hunting companion geese, lamprey eels, carp, are europeans to improve their diet, an important source of animal protein, which is almost the same as the diet structure of Chinese daily food, improving life and eating meat during the New Year's Festival. And in order to preserve meat, Europeans also invented the process of curing and fermentation. At that time, like Chinese, they had more opportunities to eat cured meat than fresh meat.
Conversely, dairy products as nomadic by-products are not popular. It was not until 60 A.D., after the end of the Roman Republic, that a book called the Agronomic Charter mentioned cheese as a reward as the exclusive food of the ancient Roman courtiers. This is the same as the Tang and Song Dynasties when the Chinese scholar class loved to eat lamb and cheese, which had a very low yield in the farming empire.
The origins of nomadic civilizations produced cheese
Many people do not expect that the oldest cheese in the world exists in China.
In 1934, the famous explorer Sven Hedin organized a joint expedition to northwest China, and the Swedish member Bergman found a mummified female corpse with rich costumes and exquisite funerary burial in the Xiaohe cemetery in Lop Nur in Xinjiang, and she was affectionately known as the "Princess of Xiaohe". But the Chinese situation made it impossible to continue the excavations until 2000, when a Chinese expedition, with the help of a satellite positioning system, rediscovered the cemetery.
It was also during the second excavation that careful archaeologists found some "dirt blocks" on the shoulders, necks and chests of the Little River Princess. After testing, it was found that these were cheeses from 1615 BC. The reason why cheese is placed on the mummy may be a ritual act to make the dead have food to eat.
This predates the appearance of cheese in ancient Roman literature by more than 1600 years.
Coincidentally, in the two river basins of West Asia, the steppes of Central Asia, and the deserts of Egypt, cheese specimens with similar eras have also been excavated. Obviously, in an era when traffic is not smooth, extending the shelf life with fermented milk is not the invention of one person, but the terroir art that people in different regions interpret together.
Pastures, cattle, sheep, horses and camels, time, microorganisms, and herders, all the necessary elements of cheese do not need to be imposed, and in areas with nomadic traditions, everything comes naturally.
In China, the milk tofu in Inner Mongolia, the milk lumps in Xinjiang, the milk fans of the Bai ethnic group in Dali, Yunnan, and the milk cakes of the Shilin Sani people, although there are different production processes, different cooking methods, and different ingredients, they are essentially cheese. Looking at the origin of milk tofu, milk lumps, milk fans, and milk cakes, it is easy to conclude that cheese is made in a natural environment suitable for the birth of nomadic civilizations.
Erag cheese, popular in the Mongolian highlands, is a more representative example. Every year during the mare estrus season, Mongolian herders gather horse milk to boil, ferment, then filter and dehydrate through cloth bags, and finally hang it in the mouth of the yurt so that anyone who passes by can shake it so that it can be quickly fermented and matured and air-dried; or tied to a saddle to achieve the same effect during a day's riding.
Elag cheese is a popular snack on the prairie, which can be eaten soft in tea or soup during a meal, or as a snack to meet the needs of herders to replenish calories during the whole day of grazing.
According to geographical determinism, if history develops steadily and linearly, then today's world cheese map should take the steppe of Central and North Asia and the fertile crescent soil of West Asia as the core and radiate to the surrounding areas: this is the birthplace of human nomadic civilization and the earliest birthplace and development of cheese.
The Black Death changed the node in the development of cheese in Europe
However, history is full of contingencies, and for the most part, it is not the ideal linear pattern: in 1346, the "Battle of Kaffa" in Ukraine became a turning point in the development of cheese spread.
The city of Kaffa was located in present-day Ukraine, on the border of the Golden Horde, one of the four great Khanates of Mongolia, with the Republic of Venice, and was the core port city of the Black Sea region.
The Golden Horde was founded by Genghis Khan's grandson and Kublai Khan's cousin Batu. For more than 200 years from the 13th to the 15th century, the violent and greedy Golden Horde Khan never stopped plundering the surrounding rich areas. Unfortunately, Venice, which had made a windfall from maritime trade at the time, was one of the richest countries in Europe.
Wealthy Venetian merchants built high walls and ravines in the city of Kaffa, and although the Mongol cavalry was fierce, they were helpless in the face of the impact of men and horses. Unable to conquer for a long time, the Mongols threw some black-spotted corpses with the smell of pus and blood into the city with trebuchets. A few days later, some people in Kaffa city began to have the same symptoms as thrown into the corpse: a large number of dark spots on the skin, necrosis and bleeding at the ends of the fingers, gangrene, oozing blood and juice, high fever, insanity, death in pain within forty-eight hours of illness, known as the "Black Death".
In fact, the "Black Death" was the plague transmitted by rodents, and the Battle of Kaffa became the earliest recorded case of germ warfare.
Early cases of plague in the Golden Horde are no longer available, and are most likely related to the hygiene habits and dietary characteristics of the nomadic peoples at that time. But in North and Central Asia, where the land is sparsely populated and has also experienced Mongol killings, infectious diseases have encountered the greatest natural enemy: isolation. Therefore, it can only be called a case, not an epidemic.
Throwing the bodies of plague sufferers into bustling ports, however, is a completely different nature. The Catholic populace collapsed, believing it to be a "divine punishment." Soon the gates of the city were lost, and a second round of looting and slaughter by Mongol cavalry was experienced.
The most terrible thing is that after the Venetian merchants saw the "divine punishment", they panicked and fled back to Italy with gold and silver. At the time, they didn't know the medical term "incubation period."
The terrible Black Death spread throughout Europe.
According to incomplete records, at least 25 million people died of the Black Death in 1350 after the Battle of Kaffa – you know, the total population of the world at that time was only 400 million. One in three people in Europe died of the Black Death.
The death of a large number of people in the agricultural era means that a large amount of arable land has become wasteland. Many women and children were forced to work, social goods were extremely scarce, and labor wages rose sharply. Many feudal lords went bankrupt because they could not afford to hire laborers, and were forced to rent out land, which was cultivated by laborers themselves, and greatly reduced taxes, requiring only fixed currency rent. In short, the fields are still there, and there are not enough people cultivating them.
In this context, the largest conversion of farmland to grazing in human history has occurred, and people have chosen to plant pasture grass that does not need to be cooked too much and graze livestock.
In ancient Rome, people's dietary structure of eating vegetables, grains and very little meat began to collapse, and beef, mutton, cow and sheep milk increasingly dominated people's tables.
Nowadays, in Europe, all kinds of cheese are spread over supermarket counters, making Orientals often wonder whether they are "cheese as rice". In fact, this is directly related to the prosperity of animal husbandry and the oversupply of dairy products.
Dramatically, if the process in Europe at that time, like in Chinese history, repeatedly experienced the process of war-famine-reconstruction, perhaps decades after the outbreak of the Black Death, the agricultural population would overflow and return to a social environment dominated by grain. But what is intriguing is that just when the Malthusian Trap reappeared, European technology exploded and the era of great navigation came.
The rise of the countries of the Age of Discovery multiplied the value of cheese
Half a century after the Black Death epidemic subsided, a man named Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, where the epidemic was the worst. As an adult, he sailed from Spain to the sea, eventually reaching a place called the Americas.
The invisible grasslands, fertile land, and sparsely populated natural environment gave Europeans a new understanding of the earth, and also allowed colonists to examine the relationship between farming and nomadism. More Europeans went to sea to enter this virgin land, grabbing huge wealth, and also increasing the area of idle grassland in Europe, so that people's lifestyles were further refined.
Originally a cheese that was only cheap and shelf-resistant, it began a journey of doubling its value, from material selection, to production, to warehousing, every step was finely operated, and named and graded according to the characteristics of the final product – one proof is that most of the well-known and expensive cheeses in the world today come from countries that received the dividends of the times in the Great Navigation and Industrial Revolution.
The mozzarella cheese in the Campania and Naples regions of Italy is repeatedly kneaded and stretched by coagulating and filtering the curd in hot water to make it have a slender structure and sufficient ductility. Mozzarella contains less curd casein, but its fat content is about three times that of regular milk, so mozzarella cheese has a particularly fat and powerful taste. When baking Italian pizza, the addition of mozzarella allows for a beautiful brushing during the slitting process of the pizza and a sweet and smooth texture.
Parmesan, produced in Parma, Bologna and other places in Italy, is a typical hard cheese with very little moisture content, so it is more resistant to the carving of time. Usually parmesan cheese takes one to two years to mature to reach its peak, because protein has been broken down into various amino acids, so the umami flavor is very strong, often used as a finishing touch to pasta and salad plates, a delicious risotto is also indispensable to Parmesan. In addition, it can also be used in soups and green sauces.
Cheda from Somerset, England, can be described as the national cheese of the United Kingdom. Ordinary cheda is only 2 to 3 months old, mild, soft and chewy, and is a snack for children; after 7 years of maturity, the aging cheda has a unique flavor similar to Parmesan, full of nut aroma, because of the concentration of aging, even the formation of sparkling salt crystals inside.
Steaton, from Nottinghamshire, England, is a representative of blue mold cheese, which has a recognizable blue pattern and iconic smell, thanks to several special blue molds. These blue molds accelerate the breakdown of fats and proteins, producing a spicy, salty and stimulating taste.
The Bouli produced in the French town of Bouli is a representative of white mold cheese, and its surface is covered with a unique layer of white substance, that is, white mold. This mushroom gives the creamy texture of cheese and the rich aroma of onions and mushrooms. There are many ways to eat Bry, generally cut into pieces and eat empty, with a variety of berries and nuts is also a good choice. Some people like to eat it directly with crispy bread after baking.
Greek harumi, a high-temperature resistant cheese, has a unique texture of tightness, compactness, flexibility and deliciousness due to its unique sour curing and brine marinating process. Usually, cheese has a melting point of only 80 degrees Celsius, but harumi can withstand hundreds of degrees Celsius of fire frying, frying, fire roasting, stewing, are common cooking methods. Today, this cheese has become a "meat substitute" ingredient for many vegetarian restaurants in Greece.
Processed cheese represents the general direction in which most people choose food
But all these "famous" cheeses have one major flaw: they are handmade and of erratic quality.
This is a common problem in the era of handicrafts, especially food, handmade means greater possibility of secondary pollution, and the criteria for raw material selection are different. In the manual era, people used the stomach acid of animals or some fruit acid to promote milk protein coagulation; when choosing dairy products, most of them relied on their tongues to taste; when inoculating the flora, there was no sterile environment.
But everything has changed in Switzerland, a small mountainous country in Europe.
In 1815, the world's first modern cheese factory was born in Switzerland, and cheese began to be mass-produced. Although Switzerland did not participate in the great voyages, nor did it have a vast territory and a large number of citizens to carry the changes of the Industrial Revolution, it was precisely such conditions that made them pay more attention to making the best use of things. A piece of metal, made by the Swiss into the most value-added watches and multi-functional knives; a warehouse, made by the Swiss into the highest value-added bank vault.
The same is true for eating.
With the construction of the first cheese factory in Switzerland, a sterile inoculation environment, a uniform dairy selection, a modern rennet addition, a stable fermentation environment... Since then, industrially produced cheese has begun to spread rapidly around the world like wildfire.
More interestingly, decades later, pasteurization made cheese safer and healthier, reducing the risk of spreading tuberculosis, salmonellosis, listeriosis and brucellosis.
In this environment, the quality of Swiss cheese is also known worldwide. There are three kinds of cheeses popular in the area: Gruyère, Emmental and Lacret. Gruyère is produced in the Alps of western Switzerland, the skin is dark yellow, the slices are smooth and delicate, the appearance is ivory white, there are almost no pores, the taste is rich, there are various vanilla flavors; Emmental is produced in the central Swiss canton of Bern, one of the largest cheeses in the world, each cheese is like a big wheel, with a strong cream and nut aroma, suitable for cheese platters to eat directly, or to make hamburgers, vegetable salads; Lacrette from the canton of Valais, in French there is the meaning of "scraper", The texture is quite delicate and silky, but it will be hard and difficult to chew when cold. Most of the flavors of Switzerland's national cuisine, "cheese fondue", are made from these three cheeses in different proportions.
After Switzerland, cheese manufacturing in the New World also flourished: it was clear that the lush meadows of North and South America provided excellent soil for the mass production of cheese. The United States produces thousands of cheeses, from soft fresh to hard aged varieties, as well as original Monterey Jack, Colby and cream cheeses. Although most Europeans look down on American cheese, it has to be admitted that the United States is already the country with the highest cheese production in the world.
In the early 20th century, Americans mixed natural cheese with milk, emulsifiers, stabilizers, seasonings and colors to create processed cheeses. This cheap cheese product melts easily and is of stable quality, and is favored as soon as it appears.
During World War II, the production of processed cheese products increased by leaps and bounds. Since then, many people have been eating processed cheeses instead of traditional handmade cheeses. Although some cheese products in the traditional cheese-producing countries represented by France and Italy still advertise handmade, natural taste and sell high prices, the data of mass consumption has shown that quantitative production under industrial standards represents the general direction of most people's choice of food.