This thread—
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcheese.html
The “why” of cheese was, say, touched on lightly in this otherwise fine report.
The purpose of cheese was as a way of preserving easily perishable milk in a long-lasting form.
Milk goes bad quickly, but some cheese wheels can last for years and still be good.
Food storage & preservation was Very Important in a pre-industrial, pre-refridgerated age.
Might have emphasised this…
Oh, my eyes! Somebody’s red pen go on strike?
The word ‘Cheese’ is simple onomatopoeia, as the 2000 yeaar old man has proved.
paraphrase: [melbrooks]** A man lifted the lid off of a large vat of sour milk, took a big sniff, and said “JEEEZ!!!”** [/melbrooks]
It is perhaps worth noting that cheese cannot only be preserved much longer than milk, but that, in its making, the lactose in milk is fermented to lactic acid, thus making the cheese[sup]1[/sup] digestible by the lactose-intolerant – who, after all, are a majority of humanity.
[sup]1[/sup][sub]OK, you actually only have to go as far as yogurt[/sub]
Yeah, I coulda pointed out the advantages of preserving a food supply by making cheese, but frankly, it wasn’t germane to the original question and the answer was already long enough.
Akats, I was not aware the lactose intolerant can eat cheese. Here’s a good article on the subject, written by one, Bob Fusco of the NIH, in October '95.
http://www.milkpail.com/lactose.htm I found this link at http://www.lactose.net
As for the contraction/possessive fuckup, I’ve nothing to say except I’m only semi-literate. Gimme a break.
One typo is no big deal. In your defense I’ll note that you successfully refrained from writing “from” before “whence”. And there was this throwaway line: “In those days cheese-making was still a cottage industry…”. Heh.
Every so often, our editing program has too many beers and misses an obvious. Thanks, Pod, we will have it fixed.
You are forgiven, Uncle Beer. Its been known to happen to the best of us. 
Thanks, man. Yer the best.
Ouch! Cottage industry indeed. How’d I miss that.
**UncleBeer wrote:
Thanks, man. Yer the best.
Ouch! Cottage industry indeed. How’d I miss that.**
I wondered if that was an intentional pun or not.
I’d like to throw out a hypothesis about butter, tho, since it came up in the original question. I’d like to suggest that butter was originally made/discovered by horse riders, nomads or the like. One of them probably filled a container with milk and then took off for a day of hard riding. After a few hours of this, he stops, wanting a drink. He opens container and discovers this greasy ball of stuff floating in his milk. Being experimental, he tastes it, and finds he actually likes it!
Being tied to the back end of a horse and carried along for several hours is a good duplicate of a butter churn. I have no evidence to support it, but I see it as being a likely scenario.
So you think butter came before toast?
Your theory sounds reasonable tho’.
The note in the post by akatsunami seems to imply that yoghurt is an intermediate between milk and cheese.
quote:
OK, you actually only have to go as far as yogurt
AFAIK, yoghurt and cheese are made by fermenting milk with different microorganisms, thus the products are different. For example, no maturation of any yoghurt will ever yield cheese.
I agree with him, however, that fermentation allows a good percentage of mankind to enjoy the nutritional values of milk without the nuisances of lactose intolerance. Nevertheless, heard somewhere that some lactose intolerants won’t digest well the less mature cheeses, such as cottage or fresh.
I, for one, being lactose intolerant myself, prefer to drink beer or wine, and have my rations of milk protein as cheese.
Yogurt is spoiled milk, cheese is spoiled yogurt, Roquefort is spoiled cheese and can’t get any more spoiled 
You are correct, though, that modern yogurts are fermented with entirely different microflora than are modern cheeses.
**UncleBeer wrote:
So you think butter came before toast?**
Of course it did! Have you ever seen an pictures of nomads on horses carrying toasters around? Besides, where would they plug them in? Unless they’ve got REALLY long extension cords!
I dunno. I have some little wire contraptions to put over a fire that I make toast with when camping. Now obviously English muffins came long after butter. I’m still unsure about toast, tho’.
**UncleBeer wrote:
I dunno. I have some little wire contraptions to put over a fire that I make toast with when camping. Now obviously English muffins came long after butter. I’m still unsure about toast, tho’. **
Before one can make toast, one needs bread. I have a hard time seeing nomads or pastoralists developing agriculture and hence the ingredients for bread. I could see them trading with agricultural societies for the flour or the bread itself. How you get toast from there, I dunno. Over-baked bread?
Nomad 1: What’s for lunch?
Nomad 2: Bread, left over from two days ago.
N1: Man, this stuff isn’t nearly as good as when it was fresh baked!
N2: Let’s try heating it again, maybe that’ll make it good again.
N1: That’s funny, it’s turning brown.
N2: Best not let it go to waste, though.
N1: Hey, it’s actually pretty good this way! Here, try some!
You left out some obvious dialogue lines.
N2 Here, put some butter on your “toasted” bread.
N1 Aw, Heck! I dropped it.
N2 Say, did you ever notice how it always falls “butter side” down?
I think that Unc’s pun about “cottage industry” was an inspired retort to Cecil’s original questioner’s question-
Way to pretend you didn’t intend to slip in the pun, Unc.
**Chronos wrote:
Nomad 1: What’s for lunch?
Nomad 2: Bread, left over from two days ago.
N1: Man, this stuff isn’t nearly as good as when it was fresh baked!
N2: Let’s try heating it again, maybe that’ll make it good again.
N1: That’s funny, it’s turning brown.
N2: Best not let it go to waste, though.
N1: Hey, it’s actually pretty good this way! Here, try some!**
But for toast, you need sliced bread. Otherwise, you simply end up toasting one side of half a loaf. Can you show us that nomads conceived of bread sliced thin enough for toasting?
Nomads tended to learn rather quickly. Much more quickly than us moderns. You learned quick or died.
So, the guy who toasted a whole/half loaf, probably died off. And his line died with him.
One assumes that “bread” in the "good old days’ wasn’t a loaf in a plastic wrap. It probably was flatish, or had been sliced from a loaf-form by some female whose job it was to make bread and have babies. The guys around the campfire probably never would have considered toasting a loaf or half loaf.