Food Traditions

Cheesemaking

Citation Formats

General Reference

Food and Drink Atlas. "Cheesemaking." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://food.interactiveatlas.org/food-traditions/cheesemaking.

APA Style

Food and Drink Atlas. (n.d.). Cheesemaking. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://food.interactiveatlas.org/food-traditions/cheesemaking

BibTeX

@misc{foodanddrinkatlas-cheesemaking,
  author = {Food and Drink Atlas},
  title = {Cheesemaking},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://food.interactiveatlas.org/food-traditions/cheesemaking},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

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.

Facts

Origin Period, From (Year)

5500 BCE to 5000 BCE 1

Origin Region

The Kuyavia region of Poland, where perforated pottery sieves used to strain curds from whey carry milk fat residues, the earliest direct archaeological evidence of cheesemaking; cheese production is also depicted in Sumerian temple reliefs by the fourth millennium BCE. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections