FACTORALY - E65 CHEESE

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Cheese is a staple in diets all over the world. But how did it start? What can you do with it (apart from eating it)? And what makes it so damned special? Factoraly answers some of these questions, and more can be found right here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Bruce. Hi Simon. How are you today? I'm feeling jolly well thank you very much how are you? I'm glad to hear that I am am not too shabby, thank you. Very good, very good. Indeed. That fella there is voiceover extraordinaire Bruce Fielding. And that fella over here is the wonderful, wonderful Wells, Simon Wells. Welsh. Simon Wells. So what are we doing here? Everybody knows what we're doing, Simon. They've tuned in specifically.

The majority, I bet they have. But you never know, there might be a random stray who was looking for an intellectual, classy, highbrow podcast and accidentally stumbled across us instead. So for their benefit. It's a podcast. It's called Factorily. What's it called again?

Factorily. And it's a lot of nonsense about stuff that you don't really mind about. Yeah. But you never know, it might come in handy occasionally at dinner party conversations, pub quizzes, things like that. Today we're talking about cheese. Yes, today's episode is all about cheese this is one of those subjects that is really really big and it's going to be quite tricky to condense down into a 30 minute chat now well see it's easy for me because i don't like cheese okay let's start there what the heck

so when i was younger i used to drink gallons of milk, fresh, crisp, cool milk from the fridge. And to me, the taste of milk is just delicious. The taste of cheese, however, is like a pint of milk that's been left in the sun for several days. I mean, essentially, yeah. And therefore, I don't like it because it doesn't taste like milk. Right. Okay. So, it's not that you have a particular allergy or intolerance? No, no, no. I can eat it quite literally until the cow's gone home.

You just choose not to? Just choose not to. I don't think I've ever met anyone like you. How do you do? I am the complete opposite. I love cheese. If it weren't for certain nutritional requirements, I think I could just live on cheese.

There's so much of it. There are so many different varieties, so many different applications. 2,000, apparently. 2,000 types of cheese. Yes. Carl, we're going to breeze through this then. Okay, let's start with number one and work our way through.

Yes. We'll do it in alphabetical order. So, cheese. It's a funny old word. Where does it come from? Cheese. It's one of those words that has always meant what it is. It doesn't sort of, you know,

go on a fantastically interesting journey. Cheese, fromage. Yeah, I didn't look into how fromage came about but um there's a latin word called uh cassius okay spelled cassius um that has sort of led to almost every other country's word for cheese so cassius german had cass which became case which became kais which became kaiser dutch have case which became keys we took keys we made it into cheese ta-da um there's a particular protein in milk that acts as an emulsifier in the cheese making process which is called cassian which is named after cassius well there you go so tell me what is cheese cheese is essentially a food stuff

that's made out of pressed curds um curds are what you get when you separate milk if you take a batch of milk you add certain bacteria salt emulsifying agents, etc., it separates out into lumpy stuff called curds and runny stuff called whey. Okay. So it separates into its solid and liquid forms. You have to put something unpleasant in it to make it do that, though, don't you? Yeah, so there's a thing called rennet,

which I think you can kind of do without these days. I think they have a manufactured version of it, but essentially rennet is an enzyme that exists in the stomach lining of certain animals that aids with digestion yeah and the breaking down of foods if you take some of that and plop it in the milk it it curdles it separates it out and and that's you know you you separate out the way the liquid stuff and either get rid of that or use that in the making of other foodstuffs. You take the solid bits, you clump them together, you add salt, you cook them, you press them, get rid of all the liquid, you store it for a while.

Ta-da! Cheese. You say store it for a while. Yes. How long can you store cheese for? Depends what kind of cheese you're making. Cottage cheese, you don't store it at all. You just serve it fresh. A brie might be stored for a month.

An incredibly strong cheddar might be stored for a year. How about 1400 years? Goodness me. That's an old cheese. That's a very old cheese. Talk about that. Well, in 1987, a 1,400-year-old lump of still edible cheese was found in Ireland. Huh. It was in a bog.

And this chap, Paddy Coughlin and Dan O'Connor, they found it while they were digging peat. Right. In County Tipperary. And it was wrapped in an animal's gut. And they found a partially intact wicker handle. So it was obviously being carried in a basket. And it was preserved by the bog because the bog is very moist. And it sort of sealed it.

And archaeologists believe that it may still be edible, but nobody's actually had the guts to try it. I was going to say, when you said it's still edible, I was just sort of picturing these two Irish fellas sniffing it and going, yeah, what the hell? Well, that's happened with other things, hasn't it? I'm sure, yeah. I mean, the story of rock. Do you know the story of Rockfall? I came across many different legends and myths and stories as to how different varieties of cheese came about. And I did read one about Rockfall, but go ahead. I mean, the Randy Shepard. Yes, that's the one.

That's the one I looked up as well. Go on, tell us about that. The Randy French Shepard, who basically was eating a lump of cheese and some bread and saw this girl he quite fancied and he sort of ran off sort of thought i better put the cheese and bread down somewhere so he found a little cave and put the cheese and bread down and um went after this girl and never came back for the cheese strangely and i can't think why and then the uh the the cheese caught a local mold yes the bread attracted the mould. And then that mould transferred from the bread to the cheese and then turned it into blue cheese.

That's brilliant. I found this out after a little bit of a meander from somewhere else to somewhere else via this. Yes. I was going to look up the history of Stilton cheese, because Stilton's one of my favourite cheeses. You can get white or blue. White is just really nice and crumbly and fairly mild. And then there's blue, which is the one that looks like it's gone off, which I think is delicious. Of course you do.

No one who smells my breath after I've eaten any would probably agree that I think it's delicious. And I found that the particular mold, the particular fungus that gets injected into Stilton or other blue cheeses to give it those sort of blue veins that run through it, it is just purely mold. It's a mold that's taken from the base of a tree or a piece of soil or mulching leaves. It's disgusting. Chuck it in your cheese it turns blue it tastes amazing anyway that particular fungal mold is called penicillium rock 40 okay and it's named because this rock fort cheese that was you know originated in the the french area of rock fort i think they only named the the fungus in the 1900s but they'd sort of done various

experiments with blue cheese and that identified this fungus and named it penicillium rock 40 after the rockfort cheese and the rockfort cheese was named after the area where it was first created which is this area where the caves are where the randy shepherd left his cheese behind and it got moldy, et cetera, et cetera. Right. There are quite a few myths and legends for cheese. I found a legend that was talking about the origin of cheese just in general. And it was said that an Arabian merchant was crossing the desert. And he was carrying some milk to drink in a pouch made from a sheep's stomach, which, as we've established, is where the rennet comes from. And the jostling of the milk in the pouch in the desert heat

with the stuff in the lining turned it into curds and whey. And he separated it out and he ate the curds and he drank the whey and that's how cheese was invented. Another legend claims it was created in much the same way by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. What? As he's fighting the cyclops Polyphemus. Much the same thing happened.

He and his men were carrying milk in animal stomachs. They ditched it whilst they were fighting the cyclops. They came back and it had turned into Curdsome Way. Well, there's a thing. Isn't there? And then little Miss Muffet came along and ate some of it. Of course, yes. Before the spider, obviously.

Before the whole spider incident, yeah. The lesser known chapter of Homer's Odyssey. So that's where it comes from. Yeah. Where's it going to, though? Because I hear about all this vegan cheese and things. Yeah, I've tried vegan cheese. I personally don't like it.

But then that's because I'm comparing it to traditional cheese and it doesn't taste the same. And therefore, I think it's odd. Right. Anyone who doesn't have that association, they're probably very happy with it. Essentially, instead of using milk that you separate out into curds and whey,

you sort of use... Nut juice. Nut juice, protein, oil, soy and milk, anything like that. According to one particular definition of cheese that I found from the Cambridge Dictionary, said that it's a foodstuff made from the pressed curds, which derive from milk, either animal or plant-based. Okay. So it is cheese.

It's just vegan cheese so there's no point me asking what your favorite type of cheese is because the answer would be one that doesn't exist no my favorite sort of cheese i have several favorite cheeses oh good for but not because they're edible ah Ah. Okay. So one of my primary favorite cheeses is, and I hate the smell, hate the taste, is Parmesan. Oh, lovely. I like Parmesan because it's got good stories going around it. Has it? Yes.

Okay. So there's a bank called Credito Emiliano. Very good. Which is an Italian regional bank. And they've accepted large wheels of Parmesan as collateral for small business loans. Really? Since 1953. Oh my goodness.

And they've got storage vaults full of collateral cheese. So basically they've got the world's largest collection of Parmesan, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese in the bank vaults. That's incredible. Because it's fairly expensive stuff, isn't it?

Very. I didn't look into that particular variety, but for whatever reason, it's quite pricey. Always has been. Yeah. I mean, it was often used as a diplomatic gift um in in 1511 pope julius ii gave henry viii a hundred rounds of parmesan cheese for helping him fight the french crikey yep uh yes there was a time when um henry viii and the catholic church got on ah the good old days oh yeah and days. And it was the perfect gift.

You know, a hundred rounds of Parmesan cheese. I mean, that must have cost a lot of money. It's a lot of cheese, isn't it? Absolutely. There's a story I believe I've heard about Samuel Pepys with a wheel of Parmesan. Yes. As the city of London was burning around him in the great fire of 1666, he dashed back into his burning house to save his parmesan cheese

and buried it in the garden so that it wouldn't be ruined. You use the word dash very loosely. Saunted? He didn't. He was told that the fire might be there in a day or two. Oh, I see. So he sent a servant out to go and bury it for him along with a whole load of wine oh okay so basically he thought i'm gonna have i'm gonna have to evacuate so um let's get the servant to bury the wine and bury the cheese i mean whether

the servant actually did bury the wine which is not a whole thing but um yeah so and then when he returned sometime later i mean it took a took a long while yeah um as i understand it that there was a fire coming on both sides and and he's like in the evening when he heard about the fire he sort of went i suppose it better bury the cheese and um and wine and other things and And thereby invented the raclette. He sort of went back, unburied the thing, found that the top was slightly gooey. Yes, absolutely. Grand.

And Parmesan cheese, I think, was also used as a thank you gift by Horatio Nelson to the people of Tenerife. Okay. So there was a naval battle going on. Yeah. And this was the Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Right. And the Navy decided to attack the port of Cadiz in southern Spain. Right. But they'd heard that the Spanish treasure convoys from America arrived at Santa Cruz in Tenerife. So the British sent a flotilla of ships under the command of Nelson, who'd just recently been promoted admiral. Right.

And they had like 4,000 men, nine ships, 400 guns. But this is the story that we don't really hear in the UK. No. Which is Nelson being defeated and trounced completely by the military on Tenerife. 400 guns. But this is the story that we don't really hear in the UK. No. Which is Nelson being defeated and trounced completely by the military on Tenerife. How dare you suggest such a thing? Nelson's a ballet hero. I know. I know. But basically, you know, Nelson had his 4,000 men. The Lieutenant General of Gutierrez in Tenerife had 1,700 men. Nelson had 400 guns.

Gutierrez only had 91. Okay. And it didn't work out very well because a lot of British ships were sunk and many of the sailors were killed and sort of had to swim to shore and were captured.

Yeah. This was also the battle where Nelson was shot in his arm and he had to have it amputated. Oh, that's that one. Yeah. But basically, the British asked for a truce and they agreed to withdraw with an undertaking to do no further damage to the town or make any more attacks on Tenerife or the Canary Islands.

So this is why we now have lots of holiday makers going to the Canary Islands. So this Lieutenant General Gutierrez allowed the British to leave with their arms. But Nelson had lost so many ships that he didn't have the capacity to take all his militia home. So this general lent Nelson two Spanish schooners to get him home with his troops. And he was so appreciative of this. He actually sent a load of cheese to gutierrez as a as a token of his gratitude right and it's still in still on display if you if you go to toledo in spain yeah you can you can see the cheese oh that's brilliant fantastic Fantastic. And the Uruguayan Navy once won a battle against Argentina. They ran out of cannonballs and all they had was EDAM cheeses.

So they basically loaded their cannon with EDAM. You're kidding. Nope. And they fired these few volleys at their opposition in their ships. And one of the cheeses shattered the main mast of the main enemy ship. And there's shrapnel everywhere from the shattered mast. And this killed two sailors. So two sailors have been actually killed by a ball of edam.

Goodness gracious. Great balls of cheese. I'm sure we'll put a link up on the website to explain why that's funny. We may well. Lots of other cheeses, of course. Oh, there are just millions. There are just so many varieties. I mean, even in this country alone, you sort of picture all the cheeses that are named after the regions where it's made cheddar stilton cheshire red leicester double

gloucester wensleydale uh there's one called cornish yarg okay which is wrapped in a stinging nettle it's quite tasty where does stilton come from place called stilton no no uh-uh doesn't it apparently not they're not allowed to make Stilton in Stilton. That's what? So you can make Stilton in one of three counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. So manufacturers of Stilton in these counties have received protection under European law. It's one of the protected designation of origin, origin pdos which i think we spoke about on curries yeah we did so so there are there are lots of things in the world and like champagne

for champagne yes exactly um so yeah so you don't have to live in stilton to make stilton right great so you can you can produce it in any of those three counties but not outside yes cool well that's very inclusive i find this interesting that um those names of those cheeses because that's where they come from they are now a recognized style of cheese and therefore you can make those styles with those names in other places um i had a quick look at American cheese. Yes. Which is just the worst. Sorry, here.

It depends on what you use it for. I mean, in the right places, it's very useful. You think of a nice, big, juicy burger with a little thin layer of cheese on it. That's American cheese. It goes well in a Philly cheesesteak sandwich, et cetera, et cetera. It has its purposes.

I wouldn't want to sit down i need to block of it but there you go but american cheese is actually made with cheddar yeah so when the english pilgrims went and settled in america they took their their cheese making knowledge with them and they started making cheddar cheese in america and then actually started selling it back to England as American cheese. It then sort of went through a bit of a change in the 1910s when James L. Craft, the founder of Craft Foods, got a patent for making the stuff. And essentially you grate some cheddar, some Colby,

a couple of other different types of cheese you grate them up and you mix them with really good nutritious ingredients such as acidifying agents artificial coloring sodium citrate etc all the good things and it sort of forms this gooey moldable substance which then comes out being that that sheet of orange, yellow, plasticky looking stuff. It's not great. The FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, won't allow it to legally be called cheese. Because according to them, to call something cheese, it must contain at least 51% pressed curds, which we've established is what cheese is.

This stuff doesn't it contains less than half of that and therefore it's not technically cheese it's classified as a pasteurized processed american cheese food doesn't that sound appetizing do you know about stilton rolling vaguely see you may you may know about gloucester cheese rolling which is much more violent yes uh which we'll come to in a minute but stilton rolling they basically rolled um a giant wheel of stilton along this along a street and there's teams of three or four people okay and it's how fast you can roll. And these wheels of Stilton are not level. They're cambered so that they can go anywhere.

Oh, brilliant. And it's quite difficult to roll them along this street. I'll put a video on the show notes at factorly.com. So that's the easy ones. If you don't fancy getting injured, Stilton rolling is the way to go. And the other variety where you do want to get injured. Yes. I mean, there was a winner, I think, last year who actually won whilst she was unconscious.

Oh, my goodness. Because you roll a wheel of cheese down a hill in Gloucester, in Gloucestershire, and you chase the cheese. And I'll put a video again in the show notes of people chasing this cheese and they're they look as though they're going to come to the bottom I mean the St John's ambulance must be hugely busy at the bottom of this hill yes there are so many quaint little English village traditions which I can only assume came about at the end of an evening down the pub and a few people have sort of staggered out of the pub they've just had a a lot to drink and eaten some cheese they've got some cheese left over there i bet i can get to the bottom of the

hill first i have always wondered how you make holy cheese. Generic term, Swiss cheese. It sort of incorporates things like Emmental and Gruyere and things like that. Large wheels of cheese that have holes through them. I've always wondered how that works. And it's quite a simple process, actually. Once the cheese has been made and it sits to store, we already mentioned they have different storage times depending on what you're trying to produce um swiss cheese or any cheese with holes in it

it's taken out of storage after only two weeks you store it in a cool room at around sort of 10 degrees celsius they take it out of there after two weeks and then store it in a slightly warmer room and that um difference in in temperature slightly warmer room and that difference in temperature causes carbon dioxide bubbles to form in the cheese. All right. And that's what makes the holes. They then bung it back in the cool storage to continue the ripening process and that's how you get holy cheese. Gosh. I discovered by the way you can wax your own cheese. Can you?

So if you get a hard cheese, again, I've got a video of this in the show notes. Very nice Irish guy explaining how to do it. Right. Apparently he imports the wax from Poland. Okay. And he dips hard cheese into warm wax. And once he's waxed his cheese, it'll last for up to 20 years.

Really? Yeah. And get better. Yeah. Apparently you have to keep turning it like a fine wine every so often. Okay. But yeah, apparently you can keep a cheese for 20 years. I mean, one would question why. I would have thought the best thing to do with cheese is to buy it and eat it.

Because it tastes better. If you started 20 years ago, you'll have the most delicious cheese today, apparently. I suppose so, yeah. You know what people say, say cheese? Oh, for a photo, yeah. Yeah. Most countries say cheese for a photograph. But there are a lot of different ways of smiling for the camera right so in bulgaria they say salad do they zele okay in denmark they

say orange apatzin right in estonia pea soup in in france, they say little monkey. Right. So anything that kind of ends in an E sound that makes your mouth widen in order to make a smile. Although sometimes they do say cheese. Like in India, they say paneer, which is cheese. And in Israel, they say cheese in Hebrew. In Korea, they say kimchi. In Russia, they say raisins. Right, okay. In Spain, potato, patata.

Right. But the weird one is in Tunisia, they say couscous, which makes you look like you're pouting. Yes, it does, doesn't it? Yeah. How wonderful. yes it does doesn't it yeah how wonderful in wisconsin which is a very big dairy state they they came up with a law um for a couple of years from 1935 to 1937 there was a law that restaurants had to serve cheese with every meal really yeah just in order to get rid of the stuff yeah well because it's supporting the local industry yeah restaurants had to serve cheese with every meal. Really? Yeah.

In order to get rid of the stuff? Yeah. Well, because it's supporting the local industry. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd be perfectly happy with that, Laura. I'd love to finish a meal with a nice cheese board. Well, that or mac and cheese. Oh, of course, yes. It is the biggie.

It is, isn't it? In America. The one that was very popular was a box of Kraft mac and cheese. That's right. And you basically just put it into water and it was... Yes, it? In America. The one that was very popular was a box of Kraft mac and cheese. That's right. And you basically just put it into water and it was just instant. Yeah, instant mac and cheese. Something to fill you up. There is another use of cheese and pineapple at the same time.

Oh, you're going towards pizzas, aren't you? No, no, I'm going towards the hedgehog. I'm looking forward to this. So you are probably a bit too young. But at dinner parties in the in the 50s and 60s, people used to wrap like an orange or a grapefruit or even sometimes a melon in silver foil. And then they would cut cheese into cubes and pineapple into segments. Yes. And skewer cheese and pineapple onto these, onto like toothpick things.

Yes. And stab them into this silver ball to make what was then described as a cheese hedgehog. Brilliant. And sometimes people would put maraschino cherries as eyes and make them like mouths and stuff. Well, I've never heard the term cheese hedgehog, but I know exactly what you're talking about because my my parents used to do cheese and pineapple on on cocktail sticks

every christmas when i was a kid there you go so simon as always we turn to you for uh the records on cheese there are a lot of cheese records partly because there are a lot of cheeses so there are individual records for the biggest stilton the biggest cheddar and so on and so on um so i've just picked a few just because they they piqued my interest uh there's a guinness world record for the largest cheese board or cheese platter which weighed just over two kilos and was prepared by a company in wisconsin as you've already mentioned the cheese capital of america in 2018 this cheese board contained 145 varieties of cheese and it wasn't sort of ordered by a person in a restaurant but it was a big thing that was presented as part of an industrial cheese convention type thing.

The largest cheese sculpture. Oh. 1,415 kilos. 1,415. Okay, so like just over a ton. Yes. Okay. This was achieved by a few sculptors in Louisiana, USA, in 2018.

The sculpture was created from a single block of cheddar cheese. Right. And the sculpture depicts, of course it does, it depicts an alligator in a chef's hat frying a turkey. I would have thought a mouse would have been more interesting. Yes, you would have knew. There's a record for the fastest time to eat 500 grams of mozzarella go on one minute and 2.34 seconds in a block not even grated that's half

a kilo of half a kilo of mozzarella this was achieved by an english lady called leah shutkever and she holds 35 guinness world records for speed eating different foodstuffs well i've just about i'm i'm cheesed off oh i was gonna say cheesed off were you yeah because i thought you were the big cheese well fair enough these jokes are getting a bit cheesy now aren't they ah they are very well if you want any more uh facts hard cheese so we have a few things that we would very greatly appreciate you doing for us go on simon ask for the things so a five-star review and a beautiful long liturgy of the reasons why you enjoy listening to the show. Yes.

Please subscribe to us. Hit that little subscription button so you can get a notification every time a new episode pops up. Definitely do that. Thirdly, please tell all of your lovely nerdy friends about this show so they can come along and enjoy the fun. Everyone who likes cheese that you know. Yes. Or even those who don't, because it's interesting anyway. So that's the end of another episode of Factorily.

Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much. We enjoyed your company. Please come again soon. Bye-bye. Au revoir.