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Is Poland the country that cheese came from?
Source: Agencies |
December 14, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
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LITTLE Miss Muffet could have been separating her curds and whey 7,500 years ago, according to a new study that has found the earliest evidence of cheese-making.
Scientists performed a chemical analysis on fragments from 34 pottery sieves discovered in Poland to determine their purpose. Until now, experts weren't sure whether such sieves were used to make cheese, beer or honey.
Though there is no definitive test for cheese, Richard Evershed and colleagues at the UK's University of Bristol found large amounts of fatty milk residue on the pottery shards compared to cooking or storage pots from the same sites. That suggests the sieves were specifically used to separate fat-rich curds from liquid whey in soured milk in a crude cheese-making process.
"It's a very compelling forensic argument that this was connected to cheese," Evershed said. "There aren't many other dairy processes where you would need to strain," he said. He wasn't sure what kind of milk was used, but said there were lots of cattle bones in the region.
Paul Kindstedt, a professor of nutrition and food sciences at the University of Vermont and author of "Cheese and Culture," said: "It's almost inconceivable that the milk fat residues in the sieves were from anything else but cheese."
He said the discovery of cheese-making marked a major development for Neolithic people and gave them a survival advantage by allowing them to turn milk into a form that provided essential calories, proteins and minerals. At that time, the adult population was largely lactose intolerant, so a product with less lactose, like cheese, allowed everyone to digest the nutrients in milk.
Scientists performed a chemical analysis on fragments from 34 pottery sieves discovered in Poland to determine their purpose. Until now, experts weren't sure whether such sieves were used to make cheese, beer or honey.
Though there is no definitive test for cheese, Richard Evershed and colleagues at the UK's University of Bristol found large amounts of fatty milk residue on the pottery shards compared to cooking or storage pots from the same sites. That suggests the sieves were specifically used to separate fat-rich curds from liquid whey in soured milk in a crude cheese-making process.
"It's a very compelling forensic argument that this was connected to cheese," Evershed said. "There aren't many other dairy processes where you would need to strain," he said. He wasn't sure what kind of milk was used, but said there were lots of cattle bones in the region.
Paul Kindstedt, a professor of nutrition and food sciences at the University of Vermont and author of "Cheese and Culture," said: "It's almost inconceivable that the milk fat residues in the sieves were from anything else but cheese."
He said the discovery of cheese-making marked a major development for Neolithic people and gave them a survival advantage by allowing them to turn milk into a form that provided essential calories, proteins and minerals. At that time, the adult population was largely lactose intolerant, so a product with less lactose, like cheese, allowed everyone to digest the nutrients in milk.
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