After watching the videos and hearing the quotes it sounds to me like they were indeed making mozzarella or another pasta filata cheese as well as something that could well be pecorino.
It does seem like they were making something like a pasta filata cheese to me too. I am planning on doing videos on individual cheeses soon, so will look into it more for those.
@@cheesehistory Nice. I look forward to that. In another video you mentioned the beduin cheese Jameed that is still made today. Incredible how some things haven't changed much at all and traditions have lived on.
My favorite Italian cheese is over 24 months Parmigiano Reggiano. It's nutty, complex flavor and texture is just addicting and takes you to another dimension. I would say it is one of the reasons that makes me worth living this life 🤣 As you said in your video, even though Romans where masters in cheesemaking, I don't think it was discovered by them!
Interestingly, modern artisinal Caerphilly is made in a *very* similar manner to Columella's description (if you ignore the cooking phase). When you drain the curds, you stack them for a short cheddaring period. This allows most of the whey to drain from the curds. Stacking and flipping is the most common method of cheddaring, but it's not uncommon for people to put a small amount of weight on the curds if you are making a small batch. After that you mill and salt the cheese, but you only add about 60% of the salt you would add for a normal cheddar. This slows down the action of the starter culture, but doesn't stop it completely. You then put the curds into a mold and press it with a lot of weight. The short cheddaring period leaves the curds at a relatively high pH (5.5 - 5.7), and the salt slows down the acidification of the cheese. The trick here is that the major factor in how easily curds knit (and therefore the amount of weight you need to close the rind) is dominated by the pH of the curds. With very high pH (above 6.0, like you might have for a tomme), the curds will basically come together with almost no weight. With a lower pH (say 5.3, like a cheddar), you need a lot of weight. Especially if you have drained most of the whey when cheddaring, a modern cheddar can require up to 8 psi. This would probably be something like 500 kg of weight for the size of cheeses that they were making. Without the invention of something like a dutch press, that would be literally impossible. What the double salting technique does is allow you to cheddar the curd (and thereby drain it of excess whey and allow it to age longer), but still press it with something like 20 kg of weight. It's actually the reason that I always make Caerphilly and never make Cheddar. My press is not up to the weights required for a good cheddar :-) After the cheese is formed, usually it is left for about 12 hours and then brined, although I always dry salt my cheeses. Anyway, I just made a Caerphilly yesterday. If I can get out to the shop to get some more milk, I'll give Columella's technique a try. I'm *very* interested in the lack of cooking. Probably, I'll do something like a 1 hour ripening period at 36 C. Then a 12 minute flocculation target with a 3.5x multiplier (total 42 minute coagulation). Ladle the curd into a cheese cloth lined colander and put a couple of ziplock bags full of tepid water on top as a weight. Let that go for an hour or so (flipping every 15 minutes??? Not sure how quickly it will drain, so it may be hard to flip). Then mill, salt with about 1.5% of the weight of the curds (2 additions with 10 minute mellowing time between additions). Press for 2 hours to close the rind. Leave in the press overnight and then salt with another 1% of the weight of the curds (assuming that this cheese should be a little on the salty side). Historical recipes are always tricky, though. The main problem is acidification. They didn't know about bacteria and so would not know to add a starter. This means that the milk is acidifying from the existing bacteria. The rate of acidification is totally dependent on the amount of time it took for them to go from milking the animals to starting making cheese. I was doing a deep dive into traditional Cotija last year (BTW, it's made the exact same way it was made in the 1600's, hint, hint ;-) ). This was the trickiest thing for me to figure out because it makes such a big difference to the resultant cheese. Anyway, I'm rambling. This whole episode makes me seriously wonder whether Cheshire, for predecessor of cheddar, is a direct descendent of the cheese that Columella describes.
That's super interesting. There is a good chance that there is a connection between Roman cheeses and those in Britain due to the Roman presence there. If you do use Columella's technique, please do let me know how the cheese turns out.
@@annevandekamp107 I haven't done it yet, but I got some insight doing a Camembert style cheese a couple of weeks ago. Basically used a 5.0x multiplier, then cut columns into the curd and ladled it out into forms. So it's not really all that different. I had a bit too many curds and what I found was even the weight of the curds was enough to overpress the cheese. It formed a thick plug at the bottom which made it slow to drain (the original recipe has you ladling in 5 steps, 40 minutes apart to avoid this problem, but I basically had twice as much curds as I should have). This experience makes me think that you need a pretty low multiplier (look up 'flocculation method' if you are unfamiliar with flocculation times and multipliers). I'm thinking probably 2.5 is appropriate, then cut columns (maybe 2 cm or so) to help it drain a bit when ladling into the form. We'll see how it goes. They would also be using sheep's milk, so I'm thinking of doing something like 4 liters of milk, 100 grams of skim milk powder and 100 ml of 35% whipping cream to get a similar milk solids level. I've done this before with good results. I think it will help. I probably won't do this until October, though. It's very, very hot here and I think it will over acidify the curd. We'll see, though.
It was the Roman culture that developed the art of cheesemaking as we know it today. Roman cheesemakers were skilled artisans, and the Roman culture developed many varieties of cheese that resemble those we enjoy today. The Romans are credited with the first aging of cheese, or cheese storage.
Pecorino is one of the world's most ancient cheeses. The three Pecorini trace their roots back to Sardinia's ancient history of traditional shepherding and cheesemaking, although the oldest Pecorino most likely comes from even before that, in the countryside near Rome.
Cheese in Ancient Roman was made with goat's milk and was eaten by the rich and sometimes the poor as well. They also enjoyed eggs from a variety of different birds.
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Thanks for watching. What's your favorite type of Italian cheese? Do you think it could originate with the Romans?
Mozzarella, Pecorino romano and Gorgonzola picante.
No idea! 😅
After watching the videos and hearing the quotes it sounds to me like they were indeed making mozzarella or another pasta filata cheese as well as something that could well be pecorino.
It does seem like they were making something like a pasta filata cheese to me too. I am planning on doing videos on individual cheeses soon, so will look into it more for those.
@@cheesehistory Nice. I look forward to that.
In another video you mentioned the beduin cheese Jameed that is still made today. Incredible how some things haven't changed much at all and traditions have lived on.
My favorite Italian cheese is over 24 months Parmigiano Reggiano. It's nutty, complex flavor and texture is just addicting and takes you to another dimension. I would say it is one of the reasons that makes me worth living this life 🤣
As you said in your video, even though Romans where masters in cheesemaking, I don't think it was discovered by them!
Interestingly, modern artisinal Caerphilly is made in a *very* similar manner to Columella's description (if you ignore the cooking phase). When you drain the curds, you stack them for a short cheddaring period. This allows most of the whey to drain from the curds. Stacking and flipping is the most common method of cheddaring, but it's not uncommon for people to put a small amount of weight on the curds if you are making a small batch. After that you mill and salt the cheese, but you only add about 60% of the salt you would add for a normal cheddar. This slows down the action of the starter culture, but doesn't stop it completely. You then put the curds into a mold and press it with a lot of weight. The short cheddaring period leaves the curds at a relatively high pH (5.5 - 5.7), and the salt slows down the acidification of the cheese.
The trick here is that the major factor in how easily curds knit (and therefore the amount of weight you need to close the rind) is dominated by the pH of the curds. With very high pH (above 6.0, like you might have for a tomme), the curds will basically come together with almost no weight. With a lower pH (say 5.3, like a cheddar), you need a lot of weight. Especially if you have drained most of the whey when cheddaring, a modern cheddar can require up to 8 psi. This would probably be something like 500 kg of weight for the size of cheeses that they were making. Without the invention of something like a dutch press, that would be literally impossible.
What the double salting technique does is allow you to cheddar the curd (and thereby drain it of excess whey and allow it to age longer), but still press it with something like 20 kg of weight. It's actually the reason that I always make Caerphilly and never make Cheddar. My press is not up to the weights required for a good cheddar :-) After the cheese is formed, usually it is left for about 12 hours and then brined, although I always dry salt my cheeses.
Anyway, I just made a Caerphilly yesterday. If I can get out to the shop to get some more milk, I'll give Columella's technique a try. I'm *very* interested in the lack of cooking. Probably, I'll do something like a 1 hour ripening period at 36 C. Then a 12 minute flocculation target with a 3.5x multiplier (total 42 minute coagulation). Ladle the curd into a cheese cloth lined colander and put a couple of ziplock bags full of tepid water on top as a weight. Let that go for an hour or so (flipping every 15 minutes??? Not sure how quickly it will drain, so it may be hard to flip). Then mill, salt with about 1.5% of the weight of the curds (2 additions with 10 minute mellowing time between additions). Press for 2 hours to close the rind. Leave in the press overnight and then salt with another 1% of the weight of the curds (assuming that this cheese should be a little on the salty side).
Historical recipes are always tricky, though. The main problem is acidification. They didn't know about bacteria and so would not know to add a starter. This means that the milk is acidifying from the existing bacteria. The rate of acidification is totally dependent on the amount of time it took for them to go from milking the animals to starting making cheese. I was doing a deep dive into traditional Cotija last year (BTW, it's made the exact same way it was made in the 1600's, hint, hint ;-) ). This was the trickiest thing for me to figure out because it makes such a big difference to the resultant cheese.
Anyway, I'm rambling. This whole episode makes me seriously wonder whether Cheshire, for predecessor of cheddar, is a direct descendent of the cheese that Columella describes.
That's super interesting. There is a good chance that there is a connection between Roman cheeses and those in Britain due to the Roman presence there.
If you do use Columella's technique, please do let me know how the cheese turns out.
This is very interesting. Did you ever get to try Columella's technique ?
@@annevandekamp107 I haven't done it yet, but I got some insight doing a Camembert style cheese a couple of weeks ago. Basically used a 5.0x multiplier, then cut columns into the curd and ladled it out into forms. So it's not really all that different. I had a bit too many curds and what I found was even the weight of the curds was enough to overpress the cheese. It formed a thick plug at the bottom which made it slow to drain (the original recipe has you ladling in 5 steps, 40 minutes apart to avoid this problem, but I basically had twice as much curds as I should have).
This experience makes me think that you need a pretty low multiplier (look up 'flocculation method' if you are unfamiliar with flocculation times and multipliers). I'm thinking probably 2.5 is appropriate, then cut columns (maybe 2 cm or so) to help it drain a bit when ladling into the form. We'll see how it goes. They would also be using sheep's milk, so I'm thinking of doing something like 4 liters of milk, 100 grams of skim milk powder and 100 ml of 35% whipping cream to get a similar milk solids level. I've done this before with good results. I think it will help.
I probably won't do this until October, though. It's very, very hot here and I think it will over acidify the curd. We'll see, though.
It was the Roman culture that developed the art of cheesemaking as we know it today. Roman cheesemakers were skilled artisans, and the Roman culture developed many varieties of cheese that resemble those we enjoy today. The Romans are credited with the first aging of cheese, or cheese storage.
Pecorino is one of the world's most ancient cheeses. The three Pecorini trace their roots back to Sardinia's ancient history of traditional shepherding and cheesemaking, although the oldest Pecorino most likely comes from even before that, in the countryside near Rome.
Cheese in Ancient Roman was made with goat's milk and was eaten by the rich and sometimes the poor as well. They also enjoyed eggs from a variety of different birds.
Very interesting, thanks!
Science and history combined! Love it 😍
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.
Good job!
Great research, this is fascinating 💖🤩😍
Thanks.
That "ingredient in numerous compositions" is butyric/butanoic acid
Great content. If only they had tomatoes back then!
😁👍👌✌🖖😎