
How A Cheese Goes Extinct - fanf2
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-a-cheese-goes-extinct
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dfxm12
_In 2004 ... Joe Schneider decided to make a raw-milk version of Stilton, the
process was like trying to resurrect the dinosaurs using only a sketch of a
Tyrannosaurus rex on the back of a napkin for reference. ... a raw-milk
version hadn’t been made since the late nineteen-eighties_

This seems overstated. I thought I was going to read this cheese was last made
in the 19th century. He talks about having to rely on people for their "taste
memory" and pictures, but what about written recipes and notes held over from
dairies? Written reviews of the cheese? Interviews with people whose job it
was to make it? Certainly, these records still exist today, let alone 16 years
ago...

As written, this reminds me of this Simpsons Clip:
[https://youtu.be/viejY6UZ5Bk?t=40](https://youtu.be/viejY6UZ5Bk?t=40)

~~~
ry_co
I am uniquely qualified to respond to this, as about 6 years ago I developed a
raw milk cheese that was inspired by Stilton that eventually won 1st place in
its class in the World Champion Cheese Contest.

I do not feel that the original claim is overstated. Creating any novel cheese
is remarkably difficult–seriously, it's really damn hard–but recreating a
cheese that no longer exists and was likely made in a different location under
different circumstances is effectively impossible. There are so many hidden
variables involved that, even if they had access to the model cheese, a
talented cheesemaker could still take years to make a good approximation. And
it would only be an approximation. Even with today's advanced cheese
technology you cannot recreate terrior.

Since they don't have access to the model cheese, this difficulty is
compounded many times.

Edit: I want to add that even though I was at the peak of my cheese game, I
was only able to do this because I had effectively unlimited money to throw at
the problem and very little oversight from my investors.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
As a French I am obviously interested in that world championship.

Since we did not have a national mourning day I am curious if it was indeed a
worldwide competition?

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gerdesj
Beautifully written article. I think I slagged off the last one from the New
Yorker linked on HN but this one is lovely.

 _... they leapfrogged back through history and secured the name Stichelton
... the Old English name for the town of Stilton ... the cheese was more
itself than ever._

That is exactly the solution I'd have tried to deploy: if you want to market
"ye olde worlde" make sure you know "the old world". Ye is pronounced the or
thee - the Y is actually thorne which is a lost letter of the alphabet in
English. The trailing "e"s are silent.

If you can't use Stilton then using Stichelton for your product implies age
and is not too far from Stilton to be fairly obvious in the UK and can be
spelt out in a Gothic black-letter fount. Good skills.

I live quite close to Cheddar and quite a few cheeses are made hereabouts.

mmmm cheese ...

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agf
I've been making cheese at home for a few years now, and was lucky enough to
find a local source of raw milk a few months ago, at the beginning of the
pandemic. Since then, I've made cheese exclusively with raw milk.

While I'd read about the differences previously, they're understated by most
sources -- I can only assume many people are passing on accounts they've heard
rather than speaking from experience. The texture of the finished cheese and
how the milk acts while being processed into cheese is incredibly different
from even fresh low-temperature pasteurized milk with added calcium.

Even a simple cheese like mozzarella is very noticeably different -- and in my
opinion, better -- when made from raw milk. So while I'm willing to believe
commercially produced cheeses are closer to their raw-milk counterparts than
my homemade cheeses are, I still feel we've lost a lot when it comes to the
experience of eating cheese just by using pasteurized milk.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> I still feel we've lost a lot when it comes to the experience of eating
> cheese just by using pasteurized milk.

A big thing we miss out on by using pasteurized milk is Listeria.

According to the CDC[0], "Soft cheeses made with unpasteurized milk (also
called raw milk) are estimated to be 50 to 160 times more likely to cause
Listeria infection than when they are made with pasteurized milk."

0\.
[https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/prevention.html](https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/prevention.html)

~~~
thatfrenchguy
And yet countries like France have no problem with people eating unpasteurized
cheeses all the time every day. And the cheese there is on a different league
than in the US diversity and quality wise ;-).

~~~
empthought
Actually they do, their rate of listeriosis is higher, increasing, and not
linked to specific contamination in the supply chain leading to outbreaks:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600261/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600261/)

Maybe not a big problem compared to say, coronavirus, but I’ll take my milk
pasteurized, thanks.

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anarbadalov
I had no idea i wanted to get all existential about cheese, or that a story
about it could be so moving. Thanks for posting!

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linuxftw
Much of the genetic diversity of our food supply is threatened today. Whether
it's the strain of yeast needed to make cheese, or a variety of bean no longer
grown commercially.

We are probably unable to recreate crops from wild genetics at this point.
Every variety we lose is gone forever.

Domesticated food animals are facing the same fate. I don't think we could
recreate the domesticated sheep from the wild at this point. We're only a
couple generations from a real crisis at this point, and in many areas, the
crisis is already here.

~~~
bserge
Kind of, maybe. Domesticated animals are still in the wild in many places, so
if there was any desire to "start from scratch", so to say, it can be done.

This reminded me of some places with high boar populations, you can hunt them
anytime since they're overrunning the ecosystem basically.

Yet people don't like their meat because it's "too gamey", whatever that
means.

There's also the oily fish species that everyone seems to hate but they
actually taste good and are nutritious.

Point is, the reason for the lack genetic diversity in food supply is people -
they simply don't want diversity. We've found the best tasting or more
versatile food and everyone's going with that.

I have no doubt that diets will adapt if some crops or animals completely
disappear somehow.

Diversity of overall flora and Fauna is indeed screwed. So many species are
near extinct already and few care.

