Cheese History
Cheese history brings together the story of making food from milk and the questions behind familiar accounts of its past. Explore the evidence, follow changes in production and travel, or take a closer look at an episode that catches your interest.
A History of Cheese: From the First Curds to Global Food
Picture cheese lying beside Bronze Age burials in China's Tarim Basin, surviving for approximately 3,500 years.
The Earliest Known Evidence of Cheesemaking and Surviving Cheese
Peer into the tiny holes of a prehistoric pot from Poland.
Cheese in Ancient Greece and Rome
Step into Polyphemus’s cave and cheese fills the racks.
Did Monasteries Change Cheesemaking? What the Records Show
Salt, cheese-cloths, cheese-vats, buckets, bowls and rennet.
Roquefort: Legend, Early Privileges and the 1925 Appellation Law
Fresh, humid air slips through cracks beneath the Combalou at Roquefort-sur-Soulzon.
How Cheesemaking Moved from Farms to Factories
Milk arrives from two dairies in Rome, Oneida County, New York.
Pasteurisation and the Change in Cheese
Picture a glass of wine losing its character as contaminating microbes get to work.
Everything in this section
- Cheese in the World Wars and RationingPicture a week’s cheese sitting on your kitchen table: approximately 28 g (1 oz), with no more under the ordinary allowa
- The Revival of Farmhouse and Artisan CheeseAn old piggery is about to become a Lancashire cheese dairy.
- How Cheese Spread Around the WorldWhey trickles through holes in a pottery vessel.
- Giant Cheeses in History: Jefferson, Jackson and Queen VictoriaStep into a Somerset farmhouse’s best parlour and meet its rather imposing occupant.
- The Great Nottingham Cheese Riot of 1766A heap of cheese sits under watch at Nottingham Goose Fair.