SC - oop - Brewer's Casserole

[Joan Nicholson]

Tollhase1 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 8/29/00 12:32:17 AM Eastern Daylight Time, LrdRas at aol.com
> writes:
> 
> << << Hey, how could ending up with
>   homemade cheese be worse than ending up with nothing but a lofty sense
>   that you've got really high standards? >>
> 
>  Not to mention the fact that homemade cheese was probably equally as rare in
>  the middle ages as it is now.... >>
> 
> OK, where did they make cheese.  I would imagine that in the bigger cities,
> their were cheese houses, but else where would not have cottage industries or
> home based been more prevalent?
> 
> Frederich.

Farmers made cheese. Larger dairy farms had dairymaids working for them.
They made the cheeses and brought them to market. A particular region,
all of whose dairy animals would likely be fairly similar in species
(sheep in parts of Scotland, cattle in Normandy, etc.), diet (local
grass and grain byproducts) and traditional dairying practice, as well
as locally prevalent molds floating around, lead to a prevalent local
cheese produced by most of the local farms. These similar cheeses all go
to the market in towns like, say, Rouen, Brie or Cheddar and the cheeses
of those markets develop a reputation as being fine cheeses from Rouen,
Brie, and Cheddar. Some get exported and may even end up as a style type
with no clear indicator of where they were actually produced, as with
medieval chese ruayn, or even modern Brie or Cheddar. 

I believe Ras's point was that making cheese in the home kitchen, as a
hobby, was more or less unknown and that business owners will
occasionally take shortcuts to stay in business, so the scruples a home
hobbyist and recreationist might have about adding Mysterious Chemicals
probably would not have been shared by a medieval cheesemaker on a dairy
farm.   

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com