Cheesemaking

The transformation of milk into a more stable, concentrated food by separating curds from whey, typically with rennet or an acid, then salting, pressing, aging or otherwise finishing the curd. Perforated pottery vessels roughly 7,000 years old, recovered in Kuyavia, Poland, and shown by lipid residue analysis to have strained dairy fat, provide the earliest direct evidence of cheesemaking, with comparable evidence of Mediterranean cheese production found dating to around 7,200 years ago. The technique subsequently diversified into thousands of regional cheeses, from the fresh mozzarella that tops Italian pizza to the aged wheels of French and other European traditions.