SC - Cheesemaking question

[Philip & Susan Troy]

rcmann4 at earthlink.net wrote:
 
> I found one web page in which someone redacted
> Platina's cheesemaking instructions.  His recipe included cooking
> the curds, even though Platina says nothing about it -- only to
> smoke the cheese after it is pressed and dried.  So I wondered if
> he was basing his actions on modern practice, or on other period
> texts that I have not read.

He may have been extrapolating from a period recipe and a known modern
process that he felt was a safe bet. I've done this myself in the case
of hams and other cured meats, so I suppose it's vaguely understandable,
if not exactly helpful to you right now.
> 
> > What I do know is
> > that of the actual cheese recipes I've seen in Dowe, Markham, Plat, and
> > Digby (the last three all early post-period),
> 
> I can see I have some book-buying to do  I have Digby, but not the
> other three.  And I've never heard of Dowe.  I also want to ILL the
> relevant section of Columella.  Herrera quotes him, so I gather he
> was still considered An Authority in the 16th centruy.

Hmmmm. What I remember offhand of Columella's stuff on cheese is that it
is all from either goats or sheep; I forget which, and he has a bee in
his bonnet about using too much rennet or other coagulant (he does speak
of using various herbs, including sage, IIRC, which may have been one
way of, and one reason for, introducing herbs into cheese). And, I'm
pretty sure he doesn't say anything about cooking the curds.
Interestingly enough, when I think of cooked curds, the first cheese I
think of is Cheddar, and I remember reading that Kean's Cheddar,
allegedly made by the same family on the same farm for the past 500+
years, is uncooked, which is said to be the major difference between it
and most cheddars. Circumstantial evidence, but there it is.

Bartholomew Dowe wrote "A dairie Booke for good huswiues", [Very
profitable and pleasaunt for the making and keeping of white meates.],
pub. by Thomas Hacket, London, 1588. I found it in facsimile form as an
addendum to a reprint of an English translation of a roughly
contemporary Italian book on household management, whose title I have
unfortunately lost. I'll see if I can check with Thora Sharptooth, who
put me onto it in the first place, and find some real publisher's info
for the volume overall. My own photocopy of it is pretty smudgy and
heard to read, but since it's an entire book on dairying, rather than
just a book containing a few recipes, I'd say it more or less represents
the state of the art for the time, or at least has a chance of doing so.
If anybody else has access to this modern publisher's information,
please confess immediately.
 
> I have also discovered, to my
> delight, that my local health food store sells non-homogenized goat
> milk.  Now, if I could only figure out why it's impossible to find
> savory in the herb section of the supermarket...

FWIW, it's quite possible to make cheese even from the spray-dried
goat's milk in cans. Evidently there's something about the structure of
goat's milk versus cow's milk such that it actually requires no
homogenization other than its natural state of emusification as it comes
out of the goat. 

Can't help with the savory, though...

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com