Cheese consists of proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. It is produced by coagulation of the milk protein casein. Typically, the milk is acidified and addition of the enzyme rennet causes coagulation. The solids are separated and pressed into final form. Some cheeses have molds on the rind or throughout. Most cheeses melt at cooking temperature.
Hundreds of types of cheese are produced. Their styles, textures and flavors depend on the origin of the milk (including the animal's diet), whether they have been pasteurized, the butterfat content, the bacteria and mold, the processing, and aging. Herbs, spices, or wood smoke may be used as flavoring agents. The yellow to red color of many cheeses is from adding annatto.
For a few cheeses, the milk is curdled by adding acids such as vinegar or lemon juice. Most cheeses are acidified to a lesser degree by bacteria, which turn milk sugars into lactic acid, then the addition of rennet completes the curdling. Vegetarian alternatives to rennet are available; most are produced by fermentation of the fungus Mucor miehei, but others have been extracted from various species of the Cynara thistle family.
Cheese is valued for its portability, long life, and high content of fat, protein, calcium, and phosphorus. Cheese is more compact and has a longer shelf life than milk. Cheesemakers near a dairy region may benefit from fresher, lower-priced milk, and lower shipping costs. The long storage life of some cheese, especially if it is encased in a protective rind, allows selling when markets are favorable.
More recently, cheese comes from chese (in Middle English) and cīese or cēse (in Old English). Similar words are shared by other West Germanic languages — West Frisian tsiis, Dutch kaas, German Käse, Old High German chāsi — all from the reconstructed West-Germanic form *kasjus, which in turn is an early borrowing from Latin.
When the Romans began to make hard cheeses for their legionaries' supplies, a new word started to be used: formaticum, from caseus formatus, or "molded cheese" (as in "formed", not "moldy"). It is from this word that the French fromage, Italian formaggio, Catalan formatge, Breton fourmaj, and Provençal furmo are derived. Cheese itself is occasionally employed in a sense that means "molded" or "formed". Head cheese uses the word in this sense.
Proposed dates for the origin of cheesemaking range from around 8000 BCE (when sheep were first domesticated) to around 3000 BCE. The first cheese may have been made by people in the Middle East or by nomadic Turkic tribes in Central Asia. Since animal skins and inflated internal organs have, since ancient times, provided storage vessels for a range of foodstuffs, it is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach. There is a legend with variations about the discovery of cheese by an Arab trader who used this method of storing milk.
Cheesemaking may have begun independently of this by the pressing and salting of curdled milk to preserve it. Observation that the effect of making milk in an animal stomach gave more solid and better-textured curds, may have led to the deliberate addition of rennet.
The earliest archeological evidence of cheesemaking has been found in Egyptian tomb murals, dating to about 2000 BCE. The earliest cheeses were likely to have been quite sour and salty, similar in texture to rustic cottage cheese or feta, a crumbly, flavorful Greek cheese.
Cheese produced in Europe, where climates are cooler than the Middle East, required less salt for preservation. With less salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for useful microbes and molds, giving aged cheeses their respective flavors.
By Roman times, cheese was an everyday food and cheesemaking a mature art. Columella's De Re Rustica (circa 65 CE) details a cheesemaking process involving rennet coagulation, pressing of the curd, salting, and aging. Pliny's Natural History (77 CE) devotes a chapter (XI, 97) to describing the diversity of cheeses enjoyed by Romans of the early Empire. He stated that the best cheeses came from the villages near Nîmes, but did not keep long and had to be eaten fresh. Cheeses of the Alps and Apennines were as remarkable for their variety then as now. A Ligurian cheese was noted for being made mostly from sheep's milk, and some cheeses produced nearby were stated to weigh as much as a thousand pounds each. Goats' milk cheese was a recent taste in Rome, improved over the "medicinal taste" of Gaul's similar cheeses by smoking. Of cheeses from overseas, Pliny preferred those of Bithynia in Asia Minor.
Casanatensis (XIV century)]]
In 1546, The Proverbs of John Heywood claimed "the moon is made of a greene cheese." (Greene may refer here not to the color, as many now think, but to being new or unaged.) Variations on this sentiment were long repeated and NASA exploited this myth for an April Fools' Day spoof announcement in 2006.
The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in Switzerland in 1815, but it was in the United States where large-scale production first found real success. Credit usually goes to Jesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New York, who in 1851 started making cheese in an assembly-line fashion using the milk from neighboring farms. Within decades hundreds of such dairy associations existed.
The 1860s saw the beginnings of mass-produced rennet, and by the turn of the century scientists were producing pure microbial cultures. Before then, bacteria in cheesemaking had come from the environment or from recycling an earlier batch's whey; the pure cultures meant a more standardized cheese could be produced.
Factory-made cheese overtook traditional cheesemaking in the World War II era, and factories have been the source of most cheese in America and Europe ever since. Today, Americans buy more processed cheese than "real", factory-made or not.
Some fresh cheeses are curdled only by acidity, but most cheeses also use rennet. Rennet sets the cheese into a strong and rubbery gel compared to the fragile curds produced by acidic coagulation alone. It also allows curdling at a lower acidity—important because flavor-making bacteria are inhibited in high-acidity environments. In general, softer, smaller, fresher cheeses are curdled with a greater proportion of acid to rennet than harder, larger, longer-aged varieties.
Some hard cheeses are then heated to temperatures in the range of . This forces more whey from the cut curd. It also changes the taste of the finished cheese, affecting both the bacterial culture and the milk chemistry. Cheeses that are heated to the higher temperatures are usually made with thermophilic starter bacteria that survive this step—either Lactobacilli or Streptococci.
Salt has roles in cheese besides adding a salty flavor. It preserves cheese from spoiling, draws moisture from the curd, and firms cheese’s texture in an interaction with its proteins. Some cheeses are salted from the outside with dry salt or brine washes. Most cheeses have the salt mixed directly into the curds.
Other techniques influence a cheese's texture and flavor. Some examples:
Most cheeses achieve their final shape when the curds are pressed into a mold or form. The harder the cheese, the more pressure is applied. The pressure drives out moisture—the molds are designed to allow water to escape—and unifies the curds into a single solid body.
in a modern factory]]
Some cheeses have additional bacteria or molds intentionally introduced before or during aging. In traditional cheesemaking, these microbes might be already present in the aging room; they are simply allowed to settle and grow on the stored cheeses. More often today, prepared cultures are used, giving more consistent results and putting fewer constraints on the environment where the cheese ages. These cheeses include soft ripened cheeses such as Brie and Camembert, blue cheeses such as Roquefort, Stilton, Gorgonzola, and rind-washed cheeses such as Limburger.
;Moisture content (soft to hard) Categorizing cheeses by firmness is a common but inexact practice. The lines between "soft", "semi-soft", "semi-hard", and "hard" are arbitrary, and many types of cheese are made in softer or firmer variations. The main factor that controls cheese hardness is moisture content, which depends largely on the pressure with which it is packed into molds, and on aging time.
;Fresh, whey and stretched curd cheeses The main factor in the categorization of these cheese is their age. Fresh cheeses without additional preservatives can spoil in a matter of days.
;Content (double cream, goat, ewe and water buffalo) Some cheeses are categorized by the source of the milk used to produce them or by the added fat content of the milk from which they are produced. While most of the world's commercially available cheese is made from cows' milk, many parts of the world also produce cheese from goats and sheep. Double cream cheeses are soft cheeses of cows' milk enriched with cream so that their fat content is 60% or, in the case of triple creams, 75%.
;Soft-ripened and blue-vein There are at least three main categories of cheese in which the presence of mold is a significant feature: soft ripened cheeses, washed rind cheeses and blue cheeses.
;Processed cheeses Processed cheese is made from traditional cheese and emulsifying salts, often with the addition of milk, more salt, preservatives, and food coloring. It is inexpensive, consistent, and melts smoothly. It is sold packaged and either pre-sliced or unsliced, in a number of varieties. It is also available in aerosol cans in some countries.
Above room temperatures, most hard cheeses melt. Rennet-curdled cheeses have a gel-like protein matrix that is broken down by heat. When enough protein bonds are broken, the cheese itself turns from a solid to a viscous liquid. Soft, high-moisture cheeses will melt at around , while hard, low-moisture cheeses such as Parmesan remain solid until they reach about . Acid-set cheeses, including halloumi, paneer, some whey cheeses and many varieties of fresh goat cheese, have a protein structure that remains intact at high temperatures. When cooked, these cheeses just get firmer as water evaporates.
Some cheeses, like raclette, melt smoothly; many tend to become stringy or suffer from a separation of their fats. Many of these can be coaxed into melting smoothly in the presence of acids or starch. Fondue, with wine providing the acidity, is a good example of a smoothly melted cheese dish. Elastic stringiness is a quality that is sometimes enjoyed, in dishes including pizza and Welsh rarebit. Even a melted cheese eventually turns solid again, after enough moisture is cooked off. The saying "you can't melt cheese twice" (meaning "some things can only be done once") refers to the fact that oils leach out during the first melting and are gone, leaving the non-meltable solids behind.
As its temperature continues to rise, cheese will brown and eventually burn. Browned, partially burned cheese has a particular distinct flavor of its own and is frequently used in cooking (e.g., sprinkling atop items before baking them).
Compulsory pasteurization is controversial. Pasteurization does change the flavor of cheeses, and unpasteurized cheeses are often considered to have better flavor, so there are reasons not to pasteurize all cheeses. Some say that health concerns are overstated, or that milk pasteurization does not ensure cheese safety.
Pregnant women may face an additional risk from cheese; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has warned pregnant women against eating soft-ripened cheeses and blue-veined cheeses, due to the listeria risk, which can cause miscarriage or harm to the fetus during birth.
colspan=2 | Top cheese producers(1,000 metric tons) |
4,275 (2006) | |
1,927 (2008) | |
1,884 (2008) | |
1,149 (2008) | |
732 (2008) | |
594 (2008) | |
495 (2006) | |
462 (2006) | |
425 (2006) | |
395 (2006) |
colspan=2 | Top cheese exporters (Whole Cow Milk only) – 2004(value in '000 US $) |
2,658,441 | |
2,416,973 | |
2,099,353 | |
1,253,580 | |
1,122,761 | |
643,575 | |
631,963 | |
567,590 | |
445,240 | |
374,156 |
Germany is the largest importer of cheese. The UK and Italy are the second- and third-largest importers.
Top cheese consumers – 2009 | Total cheese consumption (kg) per capita per year |
31.1 | |
26.1 | |
25.4 | |
22.6 | |
21.4 | |
21.0 | |
20.9 | |
20.7 | |
19.4 | |
18.9 | |
17.4 | |
16.7 | |
16.4 | |
15.3 | |
14.8 | |
12.3 | |
12.0 | |
11.3 | |
11.0 | |
10.9 | |
10.8 |
Strict followers of the dietary laws of Islam and Judaism must avoid cheeses made with rennet from animals not slaughtered in a manner adhering to halal or kosher laws. Both faiths allow cheese made with vegetable-based rennet or with rennet made from animals that were processed in a halal or kosher manner. Many less-orthodox Jews also believe that rennet undergoes enough processing to change its nature entirely, and do not consider it to ever violate kosher law. (See Cheese and kashrut.) As cheese is a dairy food under kosher rules it cannot be eaten in the same meal with any meat.
Rennet derived from animal slaughter, and thus cheese made with animal-derived rennet, is not vegetarian. Most widely available vegetarian cheeses are made using rennet produced by fermentation of the fungus Mucor miehei. Vegans and other dairy-avoiding vegetarians do not eat real cheese at all, but some vegetable-based cheese substitutes (usually soy-and almond-based) are available.
Even in cultures with long cheese traditions, it is not unusual to find people who perceive cheese – especially pungent-smelling or mold-bearing varieties such as Limburger or Roquefort – as unpalatable. Food-science writer Harold McGee proposes that cheese is such an acquired taste because it is produced through a process of controlled spoilage and many of the odor and flavor molecules in an aged cheese are the same found in rotten foods. He notes, "An aversion to the odor of decay has the obvious biological value of steering us away from possible food poisoning, so it is no wonder that an animal food that gives off whiffs of shoes and soil and the stable takes some getting used to."
Collecting cheese labels is called "tyrosemiophilia".
In the American movie High Society (1956 film), Bing Crosby compares true love to "old Camembert".
;References
af:Kaas ang:Cīese ar:جبن an:Queso arc:ܓܒܬܐ ast:Quesu ay:Kisu az:Pendir bn:পনির zh-min-nan:Chhì-juh be:Сыр be-x-old:Сыр bar:Kaas bo:ཆུར་བ། bs:Sir br:Keuz (boued) bg:Сирене ca:Formatge cv:Чăкăт cs:Sýr cy:Caws da:Ost de:Käse nv:Géeso et:Juust el:Τυρί eml:Furmàj es:Queso eo:Fromaĝo eu:Gazta fa:پنیر fr:Fromage fy:Tsiis fur:Formadi ga:Cáis gd:Càise gl:Queixo gan:奶酪 gu:ચીઝ ko:치즈 hi:चीज़ (पाश्चात्य पनीर) hr:Sir io:Fromajo id:Keju ia:Caseo os:Цыхт is:Ostur it:Formaggio he:גבינה jv:Kèju ka:ყველი sw:Jibini ht:Fromaj ku:Penîr mrj:Тара lad:Kézo la:Caseus lv:Siers lb:Kéis lt:Sūris jbo:cirla lmo:Furmai hu:Sajt ml:പാൽക്കട്ടി mr:चीझ arz:جبنه ms:Keju mwl:Queiso mn:Бяслаг nah:Tlatetzauhtli nl:Kaas nds-nl:Keze ja:チーズ nap:Caso no:Ost nn:Ost nrm:Fronmage oc:Formatge uz:Pishloq pnb:پنیر nds:Kees pl:Ser pt:Queijo ro:Brânză qu:Kisu rue:Сыр ru:Сыр sc:Casu sco:Cheese stq:Sies sq:Djathi scn:Furmaggiu si:කේජු simple:Cheese sk:Syr sl:Sir sr:Сир sh:Sir fi:Juusto sv:Ost tl:Keso ta:பாலாடைக் கட்டி th:เนยแข็ง tg:Панир chr:ᎤᏅᏗ ᎦᏚᏅ tr:Peynir uk:Сир ur:پنیر vec:Formai vi:Pho mát fiu-vro:Juust war:Keso yi:קעז zh-yue:芝士 bat-smg:Sūris zh:乾酪
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