SC - period cheeses

[Mark Harris]

Brid asked:

okay, so cheddar is out,
brie and swiss are in...
what other cheeses are period, and which are not?
<<<<<<<<<<<

The following messages are excerpted from my cheese-msg file:
(Stefan's Florilegium, FOOD section)

Stefan
- -------------------------
From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Cheese questions
Date: 25 Nov 1993 04:59:30 GMT

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Fiammetta Adalieta writes,
>munster cheeses (if I remember correctly) are not period.  I was wondering
>what sort of cheeses are, and how we know. 

I looked this stuff up several years back, and came to the conclusion that
there are several lines believed to go back to period, but that I couldn't 
readily find out why they believed them unchanged.  The period or very close
cheeses that I recall offhand still in use today are cream cheese, cottage 
cheese (but fresh, not aged), brie, and double gloucester.

- -- Angharad/Terry


From: kellogg at rohan.sdsu.edu (kellogg)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Period soft cheeses (was: Re: Is cheesecake period?)
Date: 22 Oct 1996 17:12:26 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University Computing Services

Monica Cellio (mjc at telerama.lm.com) wrote:
(attribution lost) wrote:

: >Is cheesecake period? If so, when and where?

: Cheese pies of various sorts are period, but not as sweets.  The closest
: thing I know of to dessert-grade cheese pies is from Digby (1669).  The
: closest approximation for the cheese is probably ricotta or farmer's cheese.
: Cream cheese is modern.

        This thread aroused my curiousity, so I did some fairly extensive
web searches.  Cream cheese does seem to be an American original.

        Most cheese websites claim a great antiquity for cottage cheese,
unfortunately without any references.  The one soft cheese that I seem to
have found a solid period reference to is ricotta.
The Sugarplums...All About Cheese site at <URL: http://www.sugarplums.com/
fieryfeature/c.html> shows a print of a painting entitled "The Ricotta
Eaters" by one Vincenzo Campi, who is listed as having lived between
1525 and 1591.

Avenel Kellough 


From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 10:55:46 -0400
Subject: Re: Re(2): SC - cheese goo

Sue Wensel wrote:

after a whole lotta blah blah by Adamantius

> Do we know when brie was developed?  I know cheddaring is only about 200 years
> old; I still use it because people like it.

Digby specifically mentions Chesire or Brie in the original recipe. Brie
cheese clearly existed from, if I remember correctly, about 800 A.D.
However, we don't know how closely it resembled Brie as made today. And
yes, cheddaring is only about 200 years old, meaning that a process
which probably already existed began to be called after a village where
it began to be practiced industrially. Almost identical cheeses are and
were apparently made on a smaller scale, generally known as "farmhouse
cheeses", which are very different from what we know as farmer cheese. 

Bottom line here is that I think Brie or white cheddar or cream cheese,
or some combination thereof, are probably closer to the original, but
farmer cheese still might taste better to some.

Adamantius




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