SC - cheese questions

[Sue Clemenger]

My guess is, depending on your part of medieval Europe, in contrast to
the U.S., not only would the cow breeds be vastly different, but we may
feed them different cereal grains, different types of hay/straw (don't
know, for instance, if alfalfa's period), different food supplements,
etc.  Purely speculation, of course, as I am in no way an animal
husbandrywoman (unless you count housecats).
- --Maire

BalthazarBlack at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 8/5/00 10:59:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> jenne at tulgey.browser.net writes:
> 
> > I realize that any cheese made in America is essentially not period,
> >  especially any 'mass produced cheese' because the non-period cows are
> >  eating a non-period diet, and with cheese the breed of cow and the diet
> >  REALLY makes a difference...)
> 
> Documentation, please?  How do we know that American Cheeses (and I am NOT
> talking about the pale orange plastic sheets you get in the grocery) would
> not be close to period cheeses?  There are some stellar "gourmet" cheeses
> produced here in the United States, many varieties of which were available in
> the middle ages.  As to the "non-period diet" comment.... what did they feed
> cows in the middle ages that we don't feed them today?  This is a serious
> question, by the way.  Perhaps one of the real experts out there could answer
> this?
> 
> Balthazar of Blackmoor
> 
> In the mornin' I go walking, 'cause it helps the hurtin' soften.  I've seen a
> lot of places, 'cause I miss her very often.
> ============================================================================
> 
> To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
> Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
> 
> ============================================================================