[Sca-cooks] Re: Thoughts on Cheesemaking

[Rikke D. Giles]

Eibhlin's account of ricotta making and recipes are really good.

I use slightly different methods.  I have my own raw goat's milk,  
from my own raw goats.  So I know the milk is treated well, and it's  
extremely fresh.  I only make whey cheese from the whey left over  
after making renneted cheeses; as she mentioned, whey from acid  
coagulated cheese doesn't coagulate well, again.

I use a slightly modified recipe from Gervase Markham's 'English  
Housewife' (about 1615 or earlier). The same recipe, with slightly  
different finishing handling, is in the Jacob Bifruns(Bifrons) letter  
from Switzerland (about 1560) which I translated.  Stefan honored me  
by putting it in the Florilegium a while back.

Markham and Bifruns have you take the whey, heat it until it's almost  
boiling (seething) and then you throw buttermilk into it.  This would  
be the old fashioned buttermilk, the byproduct of making butter.  The  
curds rise to the top of the whey almost immediately the buttermilk  
is thrown in.  You keep adding buttermilk until the curds stop  
rising.  The curds are 'scummed' off and put into a colander to  
drain.  Markham then has you eat them right away.  Bifruns instead  
has them drained in a basket, lightly salted and smoked.  He calls  
this Ziger, Zirconum, Serotium, Puina or Mascapra, and there is a  
Zeiger cheese made today in the Alps which is similar.

The reason that buttermilk is used in the above, in part, is because  
it is acidic and aids in the coagulation.    I don't have access to  
real buttermilk, I need a cream separator for that, and don't have  
the money for it yet.  So I use fresh milk.  I achieve the acid by  
letting the whey age for 8 to 24 hours.  Then I boil the whey, throw  
the milk into it, and scum off the curds.  Sometimes the curds are so  
delicate (this depends on the stage of the goat's milking cycle) that  
they don't scum off well, they are like clouds.  So I let the whey  
cool until it is warm to the touch and pour it through a cloth lined  
colander.  I hang the curds to drain further.  I do this with the  
curds I scum off too.   The curds are supremely tender and delicate,  
frothy, light, beautiful for cooking or eating fresh.  I salt them  
just a bit to bring out the flavor.  People frequently tell me the  
cheese is 'heaven'. Compared to cheese make with store bought  
'cultured' buttermilk the curds are small, less tough and far better  
tasting.  The demand for this cheese is so high I'm faced with the  
ironic position of making hard cheeses just to get the by-product;  
the whey.

My goats are miniature dairy goats; Nigerian Dwarves.  They give milk  
that is very high in both protein and fat, the highest of the various  
goat and cow breeds on average.  The milk doesn't have a goaty taste.  
They are fed for milk production, so there is no off flavor from  
whatever they might be eating.  The bucks are kept separately from  
the does, so there is no bucky flavor.

I'm currently working on translating the Summa Lacticiniorum from the  
1400s.  I've also got a tons of books on animal husbandry from period  
that I am going through, as I have time.  Many cheese related things  
are in those books.  I'll pull it all together someday for a series  
of lectures and A&S projects.  I submitted period cheeses, both the  
whey cheese I discussed above and some hard renneted cheeses, for an  
A&S competition (which I won) and Kingdom A&S display. I'll try and  
get those webbed soon and send in the link.

YS,

Aelianora de Wintringham
Baron of Dragon's Laire
Kingdom of An Tir