Where did cheese come from and why do Malaysians love it?

Cheese has a long and colourful history as a staple food for many cultures. (Rawpixel pic)

The next time you open your refrigerator to get something to snack on, consider taking out a slice of cheese.

Don’t eat it yet. Look at it. What you see before you is the descendant of one of humanity’s oldest foodstuff.

Before pottery, writing and metallurgy, your ancestors knew what cheese was.

As far back as 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic farmers living in the Fertile Crescent first learnt to make cheese.

This was a subsequent result of the domestication of sheep and goats, whose milk was eagerly used and consumed by people.

At some point, possibly by accident, someone left fresh milk out in a warm area and the milk soured.

The lactic acids in the milk caused it to coagulate and turn into soft clumps of yellowish-white.

When they discovered what had happened, the farmers drained whatever liquid was left, known as whey, and gave the clumps an experimental taste.

They found the curds to be soft, sour and very much spreadable.

These curds would ultimately become the first cheeses and they would be eventually put through numerous culinary processes to alter and enhance their taste.

While cheese production has mostly moved into factories, cottage cheeses still have their fans. (Pixabay pic)

Strangely enough, cheese helped Neolithic people to survive better. Milk is rich in essential proteins, fat and minerals.

But for lactose-intolerant people, milk is not a viable source of nutrients. Cheese, on the other hand, has far less lactose than milk.

With how easy it is to preserve and keep cheese, its nutrients can be kept to be eaten during famines or winter seasons.

Some pottery fragments found in Turkey that date from around 7000BC have traces of cheese and butter on them.

Cheese was a valuable trade item in maritime trade in the eastern Mediterranean. In the bustling cities of Mesopotamia, cheese was not only eaten but also used for religious rituals.

Ancient tablets record the numbers of cheese in stockpiles and list down the different types of cheese and the different rituals they were used in.

Not too far away in what is Turkey today, records talk about rennet, which is found in the stomachs of cows and other livestock. Rennet speeds up the coagulation of milk.

Eventually, the use of rennet spread across the globe, leading to the creation of even more cheeses, mostly of a harder texture.

While some cultures, particularly in East Asia, never took to cheese, other cultures went crazy over it and gave it their own local spin.

The Mongol nomads turned milk from their yaks into hard, sundried wedges of Byaslag while the Egyptians made goat’s milk cottage cheese, using reed mats to strain the whey.

In South Asia, milk was coagulated with various food acids like citrus extract, vinegar or yoghurt.

The resulting loafs of paneer would be added to curries and sauces, or just simply fried as a snack.

Parmesan cheese has been called the ‘King of Cheese’ by some aficionados. (Rawpixel pic)

The Greeks ran wild with feta cheese and the Romans had cheese included in the rations of their legionaries.

As the Medieval age began, cheese making continued to be developed in monasteries, with monks mixing different types of milk and experimenting with cheese making and aging techniques.

Parmesan, Roquefort, Munster and many other Swiss cheeses are quite surprisingly the work of men of the cloth.

The cheese industry was so valuable that the Gruyere region was once invaded by its neighbours who wanted control of the cheese makers there.

Cheese eventually transferred its production from monasteries to factories.

At present, 22 billion kilogrammes of cheese are made annually, transported and eaten everywhere.

Malaysians love adding cheese to their food, both local and foreign. There is nasi lemak with cheese, char kway teow with cheese and roti canai with cheese. Some bubble tea shops have also added cheese to their drinks.

But it is certainly strange to note, that tens of thousands of years after its first appearance in the human diet, some local farms are still using the same methods to make cheese as our ancestors did.

Little wonder why cheese is one of the world’s most ancient and beloved food. - FMT