The Complete Book of Cheese Part 1

The Complete Book of Cheese.

by Robert Carlton Brown.

_Chapter One_

I Remember Cheese

Cheese market day in a town in the north of Holland. All the cheese-fanciers are out, thumping the cannon-ball Edams and the millstone Goudas with their bare red knuckles, plugging in with a hollow steel tool for samples. In Holland the business of judging a crumb of cheese has been taken with great seriousness for centuries.

The abracadabra is comparable to that of the wine-taster or tea-taster. These Edamers have the trained ear of music-masters and, merely by knuckle-rapping, can tell down to an air pocket left by a gas bubble just how mature the interior is.

The connoisseurs use gingerbread as a mouth-freshener; and I, too, that sunny day among the Edams, kept my gingerbread handy and made my way from one fine cheese to another, trying out generous plugs from the heaped cannon b.a.l.l.s that looked like the ammunition dump at Antietam.

I remember another market day, this time in Lucerne. All morning I stocked up on good Schweizerkase and better Gruyere. For lunch I had cheese salad. All around me the farmers were rolling two-hundred-pound Emmentalers, bigger than oxcart wheels. I sat in a little cafe, absorbing cheese and cheese lore in equal quant.i.ties. I learned that a prize cheese must be chock-full of equal-sized eyes, the gas holes produced during fermentation. They must glisten like polished bar gla.s.s. The cheese itself must be of a light, lemonish yellow. Its flavor must be nutlike. (Nuts and Swiss cheese complement each other as subtly as Gorgonzola and a ripe banana.) There are, I learned, "blind" Swiss cheeses as well, but the million-eyed ones are better.

But I don't have to hark back to Switzerland and Holland for cheese memories. Here at home we have increasingly taken over the cheeses of all nations, first importing them, then imitating them, from Swiss Engadine to what we call Genuine Sprinz. We've naturalized Scandinavian Blues and smoked browns and baptized our own Saaland Pfarr in native whiskey. Of fifty popular Italian types we duplicate more than half, some fairly well, others badly.

We have our own legitimate offspring too, beginning with the Pineapple, supposed to have been first made about 1845 in Litchfield County, Connecticut. We have our own creamy Neufchatel, New York c.o.o.n, Vermont Sage, the delicious Liederkranz, California Jack, Nuworld, and dozens of others, not all quite so original.

And, true to the American way, we've organized cheese-eating. There's an annual cheese week, and a cheese month (October). We even boast a mail-order Cheese-of-the-Month Club. We haven't yet reached the point of sophistication, however, attained by a Paris cheese club that meets regularly. To qualify for membership you have to identify two hundred basic cheeses, and you have to do it blindfolded.

This is a test I'd prefer not to submit to, but in my amateur way I have during the past year or two been sharpening my cheese perception with whatever varieties I could encounter around New York. I've run into briny Caucasian Cossack, Corsican Gricotta, and exotics like Rarush Durmar, Travnik, and Karaghi La-la. Cheese-hunting is one of the greatest--and least compet.i.tively crowded--of sports. I hope this book may lead others to give it a try.

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_Chapter Two_

The Big Cheese

One of the world's first outsize cheeses officially weighed in at four tons in a fair at Toronto, Canada, seventy years ago. Another monstrous Cheddar tipped the scales at six tons in the New York State Fair at Syracuse in 1937.

Before this, a one-thousand-pounder was fetched all the way from New Zealand to London to star in the Wembley Exposition of 1924. But, compared to the outsize Syracusan, it looked like a Baby Gouda. As a matter of fact, neither England nor any of her great dairying colonies have gone in for mammoth jobs, except Canada, with that four-tonner shown at Toronto.

We should mention two historic king-size Chesters. You can find out all about them in _Cheddar Gorge,_ edited by Sir John Squire. The first of them weighed 149 pounds, and was the largest made, up to the year 1825. It was proudly presented to H.R.H. the Duke of York. (Its heft almost tied the 147-pound Green County wheel of Wisconsin Swiss presented by the makers to President Coolidge in 1928 in appreciation of his raising the protective tariff against genuine Swiss to 50 percent.) While the cheese itself weighed a mite under 150, His Royal Highness, ruff, belly, knee breeches, doffed high hat and all, was a hundred-weight heavier, and thus almost dwarfed it.

It was almost a century later that the second record-breaking Chester weighed in, at only 200 pounds. Yet it won a Gold Medal and a Challenge Cup and was presented to the King, who graciously accepted it. This was more than Queen Victoria had done with a bridal gift cheese that tipped the scales at 1,100 pounds. It took a whole day's yield from 780 contented cows, and stood a foot and eight inches high, measuring nine feet, four inches around the middle. The a.s.sembled donors of the cheese were so proud of it that they asked royal permission to exhibit it on a round of country fairs. The Queen a.s.sented to this ambitious request, perhaps prompted by the exhibition-minded Albert. The publicity-seeking cheesemongers a.s.sured Her Majesty that the gift would be returned to her just as soon as it had been exhibited. But the Queen didn't want it back after it was show-worn. The donors began to quarrel among themselves about what to do with the remains, until finally it got into Chancery where so many lost causes end their days. The cheese was never heard of again.

While it is generally true that the bigger the cheese the better, (much the same as a magnum bottle of champagne is better than a pint), there is a limit to the obesity of a block, ball or brick of almost any kinds of cheese. When they pa.s.s a certain limit, they lack h.o.m.ogeneity and are not nearly so good as the smaller ones. Today a good magnum size for an exhibition Cheddar is 560 pounds; for a prize Provolone, 280 pounds; while a Swiss wheel of only 210 will draw crowds to any food-shop window.

Yet by and large it's the monsters that get into the Cheese Hall of Fame and come down to us in song and story. For example, that four-ton Toronto affair inspired a cheese poet, James McIntyre, who doubled as the local undertaker.

We have thee, mammoth cheese, Lying quietly at your ease; Gently fanned by evening breeze, Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go To the greatest provincial show, To be admired by many a beau In the city of Toronto.

May you not receive a scar as We have heard that Mr. Harris Intends to send you off as far as The great world's show at Paris.

Of the youth beware of these, For some of them might rudely squeeze And bite your cheek; then song or glees We could not sing, oh, Queen of Cheese.

An ode to a one hundred percent American mammoth was inspired by "The Ultra-Democratic, Anti-Federalist Cheese of Cheshire." This was in the summer of 1801 when the patriotic people of Cheshire, Ma.s.sachusetts, turned out en ma.s.se to concoct a mammoth cheese on the village green for presentation to their beloved President Jefferson. The unique demonstration occurred spontaneously in jubilant commemoration of the greatest political triumph of a new country in a new century--the victory of the Democrats over the Federalists. Its collective making was heralded in Boston's _Mercury and New England Palladium_, September 8, 1801:

_The Mammoth Cheese_

AN EPICO-LYRICO BALLAD

From meadows rich, with clover red, A thousand heifers come; The tinkling bells the tidings spread, The milkmaid m.u.f.fles up her head, And wakes the village hum.

In shining pans the snowy flood Through whitened canvas pours; The dyeing pots of otter good And rennet tinged with madder blood Are sought among their stores.

The quivering curd, in panniers stowed, Is loaded on the jade, The stumbling beast supports the load, While trickling whey bedews the road Along the dusty glade.

As Cairo's slaves, to bondage bred, The arid deserts roam, Through trackless sands undaunted tread, With skins of water on their head To cheer their masters home,

So here full many a st.u.r.dy swain His precious baggage bore; Old misers e'en forgot their gain, And bed-rid cripples, free from pain, Now took the road before.

The widow, with her dripping mite Upon her saddle horn, Rode up in haste to see the sight And aid a charity so right, A pauper so forlorn.

The circling throng an opening drew Upon the verdant-gra.s.s To let the vast procession through To spread their rich repast in view, And Elder J. L. pa.s.s.

Then Elder J. with lifted eyes In musing posture stood, Invoked a blessing from the skies To save from vermin, mites and flies, And keep the bounty good.

Now mellow strokes the yielding pile From polished steel receives, And shining nymphs stand still a while, Or mix the ma.s.s with salt and oil, With sage and savory leaves.

Then s.e.xtonlike, the patriot troop, With naked arms and crown, Embraced, with hardy hands, the scoop, And filled the vast expanded hoop, While beetles smacked it down.

Next girding screws the ponderous beam, With heft immense, drew down; The gushing whey from every seam Flowed through the streets a rapid stream, And shad came up to town.

This spirited achievement of early democracy is commemorated today by a sign set up at the ancient and honorable town of Cheshire, located between Pittsfield and North Adams, on Route 8.

Jefferson's speech of thanks to the democratic people of Cheshire rings out in history: "I look upon this cheese as a token of fidelity from the very heart of the people of this land to the great cause of equal rights to all men."

This popular presentation started a tradition. When Van Buren succeeded to the Presidency, he received a similar mammoth cheese in token of the high esteem in which he was held. A monstrous one, bigger than the Jeffersonian, was made by New Englanders to show their loyalty to President Jackson. For weeks this stood in state in the hall of the White House. At last the floor was a foot deep in the fragments remaining after the enthusiastic Democrats had eaten their fill.

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_Chapter Three_

Foreign Greats

_Ode to Cheese_