[Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 34, Issue 65

[Kathleen Madsen]

During the month of March you begin to see fresh goat
cheeses hit the market, as kidding season is Jan to
Feb.  These days most farmers only give the colostrum
(produced the first 10 days or so) and early milk to
the kids for the first two weeks and then begin
collecting the milk to use for spring cheeses shortly
after.

Sheep begin milking around April/May for market, and
are lambing right about now.

Cows were not used for milk as much until very late in
period, they were primarily work and meat animals
prior to that.  Cows were not cultivated for dairy
purposes until closer to the sixteenth century as
their population expanded.  They require *by far* more
land and resources per pound of milk than do goats or
sheep.

Two of the most famous cheeses from period were aged
for a minimum of two years before being released -
Sbrinz from Switzerland (precurser to parmigiano
reggiano) and Parmigiano Reggiano from Italy (produced
in late period).  There are several cheeses that were
aged up to a year and more, but they are by far fewer
than those that were aged for a lesser amount of time.
 It is very difficult to make a cheese exactly right
every time so that it will survive the long aging
time.  Granted, in period they were extremely good at
sanitation but even today the conditions have to be
exactly right for it to be able to age-on.  Plus, you
need a *lot* more milk because you need to make a much
larger cheese.  The bigger the cheese, the dryer you
can make the paste, the more impervious the rind you
create, the longer it will last.  Typically these
cheeses that are aged to a year or more are only good
for cooking.  There is so little moisture left and the
flavor is so intense that you only need to use a small
amount at a time grated into or over your food.

Eibhlin, the cheese-geek


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Does that Lenten restriction include cheeses as well?
I thought part  
of the deal was saving the milk for the calves and
such, but cheese  
could have been from last year's harvest. Although
some of the  
fasting seems to be to give a religious reason for
giving up  
something you don't have anyway. But that would also
indicate that  
cheeses weren't kept over a year. We know that
medieval wines were  
often going bad before the next year's crop came in.
Do we have any  
evidence of any medieval cheeses being kept longer
than a year?

Stefan