The Complete History of Cheese

The earliest evidence of cheese production comes from the Kujawy region of northern Poland, where archaeologists discovered pottery shards pierced with small holes — the unmistakable design of a cheese strainer. Lipid residue analysis of these sieves, dating to approximately 5,500–5,400 BCE, confirmed the presence of milk fats, demonstrating that Neolithic Europeans were processing milk into early forms of fresh cheese thousands of years ago.

In the Middle East — the "Fertile Crescent" spanning modern Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran — cattle, sheep, and goats were domesticated from around 9,000 BCE. The step to cheese was likely accidental: milk stored in pouches fashioned from animal stomachs would have been exposed to natural rennet (the enzyme chymosin produced in the stomach lining), causing spontaneous coagulation into curds and whey.

Early humans would have been lactose intolerant as adults, making raw milk difficult to digest. Fresh cheese, which contains significantly less lactose than milk, offered a solution — a durable, digestible, calorie-dense food that could sustain nomadic populations far longer than fresh milk.

The Sumerians of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) left behind some of the earliest written descriptions of cheese production. The "Hymn to Ninkasi," a Sumerian poem from around 1800 BCE, references dairy products, and administrative tablets from the Ur III period (2100–2000 BCE) record cheese distributions in temples and among workers.

The famous "Frieze of the Dairy" — a limestone frieze discovered at the Temple of Ninhursag at Tell al-Ubaid and dated to approximately 2900–2400 BCE — is one of the clearest visual records of ancient dairy processing. It depicts priests or workers milking cows, churning butter, and processing dairy in what appears to be a systematic, temple-organized operation.

• At least 20 different types of cheese are believed to have been produced in Mesopotamia
• Cheese was used as temple offerings to the gods
• Workers on large estates were partly paid in dairy products including fresh cheese
• Salt was already understood as a preservative — salted cheeses could last longer in the hot climate

In ancient Egypt, cheese was considered a luxury food and a practical ration. Tomb paintings in Saqqara and other sites depict dairy processing scenes, and cheese has been discovered as a burial offering in multiple tombs. In 2018, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities discovered what is believed to be the world's oldest solid cheese — a 3,200-year-old sample found in the tomb of Ptahmes, the Mayor of Memphis during the reign of Ramesses II.

Egyptian cheese was typically soft and fresh, made from cow's, sheep's, or goat's milk. The hot climate made long aging nearly impossible without proper infrastructure, but Egyptians developed early salting and brining techniques to extend shelf life. Cheese appears in accounts as rations for workers on construction projects, as payment, and as food for temple priests.

Homer's Odyssey, composed around 800 BCE, contains one of the most vivid descriptions of ancient cheesemaking. In Book IX, Odysseus and his men encounter the Cyclops Polyphemus and find his cave filled with "pails and bowls brimming with whey" and "racks loaded with drying cheeses." This suggests that rack-aged, whey-drained cheeses — similar to modern fresh sheep's cheeses — were already a common sight in Greek civilization.

The Greeks elevated cheese to a sophisticated culinary ingredient. They produced a variety of cheeses from goat, sheep, and cow milk, mixing them with herbs, honey, wine, and poppy seeds. A dessert of cheese mixed with honey and sesame was served at symposia (formal drinking parties). Cheese was also considered medicinal — early Greek physicians prescribed certain cheeses for digestive problems.

• Brined cheese — early feta-like cheeses preserved in brine
• Smoked cheese — preserved over wood fires
• Honey cheese — mixed with local honey for sweetness
• Herb cheese — flavored with thyme, oregano, and wild herbs

The island of Zakynthos was particularly renowned for its cheese production, as were regions of Macedonia and Epirus. Greek colonists carried cheesemaking traditions to southern Italy (Magna Graecia), where they laid the foundations for what would later become Italian cheesemaking excellence.

No civilization in antiquity did more to systematize, spread, and elevate cheesemaking than Rome. The Romans transformed cheese from a regional craft into a structured, technically refined industry that reached every corner of their empire — from Britain to North Africa, from Spain to the Black Sea coast.

The agricultural writer Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE) and the encyclopedist Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) documented Roman cheesemaking with remarkable precision. Pliny's Naturalis Historia discusses different cheese types, aging methods, regional differences, and even which provinces produced the finest cheese — he considered the cheese of Nîmes (Nemausus) in Gaul to be particularly excellent, as well as cheese from Liguria and the Alps.

Roman soldiers received a ration of approximately 27 grams of cheese per day. The city of Rome maintained large cheese markets (the forum casearium). Cheese was used as an ingredient in Roman cooking — the cookbook Apicius, compiled in late antiquity, contains numerous recipes calling for cheese, including pastries, sauces, and stuffed dishes.

Roman Cheese Types

• Caseus Helveticus — from the Alpine Swiss region, a firm, aged cheese
• Caseus Vestinus — from the Apennine highlands, smoked and strong
• Caseus Lunensis — from the Luni region, a large-format aged cheese ancestor of Pecorino
• Caseus Sarsinas — from the Romagna region, considered a luxury product
• Caseus molle — fresh, soft cheese eaten immediately
• Caseus aridus — dry, salted cheese made for long preservation

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, the transmission of cheesemaking knowledge in Europe largely fell to the Catholic Church. Monasteries became centers of agricultural innovation, and monks — who required protein sources compatible with frequent periods of meat abstinence — became Europe's foremost cheesemakers. Monastic communities had several key advantages: stable institutional memory, written records, controlled environments (cellars for aging), disciplined labor, and trade connections.

Many of Europe's most iconic cheeses trace their origins directly to medieval monasteries:

• Roquefort (France) — legend dates its discovery to a shepherd who left his lunch of bread and fresh sheep's cheese in the Combalou caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon; returning weeks later, he found it transformed into a blue-veined delicacy. First documented mention appears in 1070 CE in the Chronicles of the Abbey of Conques.
• Gruyère (Switzerland) — production documented in the twelfth century in the Canton of Fribourg; exported as far as Rome by the thirteenth century
• Munster (France/Germany) — developed by Irish monks in the Vosges mountains around the 7th century CE, named after the Latin monasterium
• Port Salut (France) — created by Cistercian monks at the Abbey of Notre-Dame du Port-du-Salut in the nineteenth century, following ancient monastic cheese traditions
• Parmigiano-Reggiano (Italy) — Benedictine and Cistercian monks in the Po Valley are credited with developing the techniques for this hard, aged cheese, possibly as early as the twelfth century

Beyond monasteries, cheese was a cornerstone of medieval peasant diets across Europe. Manorial accounts from England, France, and Germany record cheese production as a major economic activity on estates. Cheese fairs were held in market towns, and regional varieties developed as a result of local milk, local molds, local cultures, and local aging conditions.

Italy's Renaissance was not only an artistic and intellectual revolution — it was also a culinary one. Northern Italy, particularly the Po Valley, became the cradle of structured, sophisticated cheesemaking. The flat, fertile plain irrigated by the Po River provided ideal conditions for raising large dairy cattle herds, producing vast quantities of milk that needed preservation.

Parmigiano-Reggiano was already being exported to France and other parts of Europe by the fourteenth century — Boccaccio mentions "a mountain of Parmesan cheese" in Il Decamerone (1353). By the Renaissance, Parmesan had become a prestige export, gifted between noble families and featured at banquets alongside the finest meats and wines.

Grana Padano — the Parmigiano's cousin from the western Po Valley — was documented in a 1477 list of local products by Bartolomeo Platina in De honesta voluptate, one of the first printed cookbooks.

Renaissance culinary writers began systematically cataloguing cheeses. Platina described multiple cheese types by texture, milk source, and aging. This period also saw the formalization of several cheese-production contracts and trade agreements that defined regional boundaries still recognized today in modern PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) legislation.

The Age of Exploration fundamentally changed cheese's global reach. European colonists — Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French — brought their dairy animals and cheesemaking traditions with them as they settled the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Cattle and goats arrived in the Caribbean with Columbus's second voyage in 1493. Spanish missionaries introduced cheesemaking to Mexico and South America, producing early versions of what are now called queso blanco and queso fresco.

Simultaneously, cheese became an essential provision on long ocean voyages. Hard, dried cheeses were among the most practical foods a ship could carry — they were calorie-dense, required no cooking, and could survive months at sea without refrigeration. Dutch and English sailors in particular depended heavily on hard aged Edam and Cheddar-style cheeses during transatlantic voyages.

Two transformative inventions changed cheese forever in the nineteenth century: pasteurization (Louis Pasteur, 1864) and the industrial cheese factory. The world's first cheese factory is generally attributed to Jesse Williams, who opened his operation in Rome, New York, in 1851. Williams collected milk from neighboring farms and produced Cheddar on an industrial scale — a model that spread rapidly across the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Pasteurization offered several advantages: it killed dangerous pathogens (including Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli), standardized milk quality, and allowed cheese to be produced in a wider range of climates without the risk of spoilage. Critics, then and now, argue that pasteurization removes some of the complex microflora that give artisan raw-milk cheeses their depth of flavor.

In 1874, the centrifugal cream separator was invented by Carl Gustaf de Laval, enabling dairy operations to process milk with unprecedented efficiency. Refrigeration, spreading through industrial use from the 1870s onward, allowed longer storage and transport of both milk and cheese. By 1900, cheese had transitioned from primarily local farm production to a nationally and internationally traded commodity.

Key Industrial Milestones

• 1815: First Swiss cheese factory established in Kiesen, Canton of Bern
• 1851: First U.S. cheese factory opened by Jesse Williams, Rome, New York
• 1864: Pasteurization introduced by Louis Pasteur
• 1874: Centrifugal separator invented, revolutionizing dairy processing
• 1882: First cheese factory in Canada opens in Ontario
• 1895: Lactic acid bacteria (starters) identified and isolated for controlled use
• 1916: James L. Kraft patents process cheese (processed American cheese)

The twentieth century brought both the greatest industrialization of cheese production in history and, paradoxically, a powerful cultural backlash defending traditional varieties. The early century saw processed cheese — most famously Kraft's "American cheese" (patented 1916) — become a staple of mass consumption, particularly in the United States. Processed cheese was uniform, affordable, long-lasting, and ideally suited to modern industrial food supply chains.

In Europe, World War II had a devastating effect on artisan cheese production. Many traditional cheesemakers were killed or displaced, animals were requisitioned, and cheesemaking knowledge was lost in some regions. The postwar recovery period saw increasing pressure to modernize and industrialize, threatening many centuries-old traditions.

The European response was the creation of protected designation systems. France's Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) system, formalized for cheese in the 1950s–1960s, legally protected traditional cheese names and production methods. Italy's equivalent, the Denominazione di Origine Protetta (DOP), followed. These systems, now unified under the EU's PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) framework, protect over 200 European cheese varieties today.

The twenty-first century has seen a remarkable renaissance of artisan cheesemaking alongside continued industrial production. Consumer interest in provenance, sustainability, and flavor complexity has driven demand for small-batch, traditionally produced cheeses. The number of artisan cheesemakers in the United States grew from fewer than 100 in 1980 to over 900 by 2020. Similar growth occurred in the UK, Australia, and across Europe.

Simultaneously, cheesemaking has become genuinely global. Countries with no traditional cheese culture — including Japan, South Korea, China, Brazil, and South Africa — now produce internationally recognized artisan cheeses. The American Cheese Society's annual competition now features hundreds of entries from dozens of states, demonstrating the maturity and diversity of American artisan cheese culture.

Scientific advances have also transformed the industry: genomic sequencing of microbial communities in cave-aged cheeses, precision fermentation for animal-free rennet and casein production (companies like Perfect Day have produced dairy proteins without cows), and robotic aging cave technology all represent the frontier of modern cheesemaking.