Ain't shyt
about grilled cheese.
Ancient
Greek mythology credited
Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese.
Homer's
Odyssey (8th century BCE) describes the
Cyclops making and storing sheep's and goats' milk cheese (translation by
Samuel Butler):
We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went inside and took stock of all that we could see. His cheese-racks were loaded with cheeses, and he had more lambs and kids than his pens could hold...
When he had so done he sat down and milked his ewes and goats, all in due course, and then let each of them have her own young. He curdled half the milk and set it aside in wicker strainers.
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By Roman times, cheese was an everyday food and cheesemaking a mature art.
Columella's
De Re Rustica (c. 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.