[Sca-cooks] Caciocavallo - Saddlebag cheese!

[Suey]

Elise Fleming  wrote: " I am confused. Are you saying that Washington 
Irving specifically carried this Italian cheese in his saddlebags? Or is 
there just a mention somewhere of him carrying some type of cheese (for 
his lunch?) on his horse? Was this caciocavallo cheese imported into 
Spain in the mid-1400s? Would it have survived the trip? Weren't there 
any Spanish cheeses that Henry IV would have taken on horseback? I'm 
missing something here. Taking cheese along on horseback, wrapped up in 
one's saddlebags, would seem to be fairly commonplace for a traveler. 
But does that mean that it would have to be caciocavallo from Italy? 
Alys K. "

The recipe for Caciocavallo cheese could have been imported to the 
Iberian Peninsula. I don't think the cheese itself was. An example of 
possible cheese recipe exchanges this is blue cheese. The French say 
their pilgrims took the recipe to Cabrales, in Picos de Europe on the 
Way of St. James, while the Spaniards maintain that the French took 
their recipe to Roquefort.
Henry IV liked cheeses. Certainly there were plenty of Spanish cheeses 
but with the expansion of his uncle's Kingdom of Aragon into Italy, we 
have more international exchanges of foods and recipes from Catalonia to 
Italy and visa versa as seen in Nola particularly. The fact that he does 
call for this and other Italian cheeses makes one think that they were 
available in Catalonia at least.
Perhaps neither Henru IV nor Washington Irving were not curing cheese 
but they certainly had cheese in their saddlebags!
Suey