# Cheese making in the old days **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 27, 2002, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223 "2002-12-27T20:09:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SwimmingwithChickens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@SwimmingwithChickens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SwimmingwithChickens)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223/1 "2002-12-27T20:09:12Z")
How was cheese making accomplished in the middle ages? How many pounds of cheese could one family produce a day, a week, a month? Surely someone among the enlightened doper masses can help me out on this one. This question arises from a spirited debate I am having at work. A friend argues that most modern day cheese could not be made in the dark ages. He also argues that cheese was more of a luxury than a necessity, and that only relatively small amounts were created at a time. Sounds like bunk to me, but I don’t know how I would go about disproving his hypothesis. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223/2 "2002-12-27T21:53:08Z")
The History of Cheese: [http://www.ebs.hw.ac.uk/SDA/cheese1.html](http://www.ebs.hw.ac.uk/SDA/cheese1.html) The Romans had mad cheesemaking skillz and apparently exported it by AD 300 – the Emperor Diocletian apparently had proclamations regarding the prices of exported cheese. I’m confused as to what part of the cheesemaking process your friend thinks is so dependent on modern industry. I might argue that it is milk, not cheese, that is a modern luxury. ---
**Author:** ![Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/57b2e6/32.png) [@Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Random)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223/3 "2002-12-27T22:20:04Z")
Think of cheese as a pre-modern method of preserving milk. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223/4 "2002-12-27T22:20:11Z")
\>\> He also argues that cheese was more of a luxury than a necessity More like the other way around. Milk did not keep for long so most of it was used for cheese and/or butter. Drinking milk was more unsual. eating cheese was not unsual at all as you can find out by reading stories of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223/5 "2002-12-28T02:36:06Z")
Laura Ingalls Wilder gives a fairly detailed description of the cheese-making process in _Little House in the Big Woods_. (I would assume that not much changed between the Middle Ages and the mid-nineteenth century; at least, nothing she describes seems particularly technologically sophisticated.) ---
**Author:** ![SwimmingwithChickens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@SwimmingwithChickens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SwimmingwithChickens)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223/6 "2003-01-02T21:55:02Z")
Thank you all for the reply. I haven’t been able to respond until just now, but I appreciate the help! ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2003, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheese-making-in-the-old-days/145223/7 "2003-01-02T22:28:18Z")
Cheesemaking has probably been around for pretty much the same length of time that man has been taking milk from animals. [here](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcheese.html) is **UncleBeer** ’s staff report on the subject.