When people say the wheel is the most important invention in human history, I like to think they're talking about cheese. After bread, cheese might represent mankind's oldest food produced by science.
Maybe even predating beer. Problem is, there are so many different cheeses made in so many different ways that figuring out the science behind this ancient food is enough to turn your brain into a gooey gooey melty mess.
So today, I'm heading over to my favorite cheese shop in Austin to see if we can eat our way to some knowledge. I'm here with Kara, our friendly neighborhood cheese expert to find out a little bit more about the science of cheese.
Hey, how's it going? Feeling fantastic how are you doing?
I'm so happy to be here. It seems like for as long as people have been drinking milk, they've been eating cheese.
So, where did cheese start? Documentation, kind of doesn't go back as far as cheese does.
But the original recipe, as legend has it, is actually an accident, as some of the great food discoveries tend to be, right? Middle eastern goat herder who was traveling across this kind of dry airy desert tried to store his milk in the stomach sack of actually one of the animals they had butchered, like a canteen.
Unfortunately when he went to drink it later, it was solid. I say unfortunately for him.
For us, obviously it was very fortunate because that's how we kind of learned that milk can turn solid and start to discover how. Yeah, I think that worked out pretty well for us.
Yeah, I'd say so, yeah. Is there something special about an animal stomach that turns milk into cheese?