The Oxford Companion to Cheese by Mateo Kehler

I don't think many of us have any sense of it, but Vermont has this special place in the cheese world. SEVEN DAYS: In the process of writing this book, what did you learn that was specific to Vermont cheeses?ĬATHERINE DONNELLY: How revered Vermont cheese is. Last week, Donnelly chatted with Seven Days at her office about cheese politics and government oversight - and how to assemble a dinner-party cheese plate for the ages. Over bites of cheddar and crackers - or hunks of bread slathered with softened Brie or crumbled blue - they unknowingly nibble on the culmination of a long culinary tradition. And though the book's initial splash was overshadowed by postelection political news, the timing was spot-on: The holidays, Donnelly said, are when cheesemakers make most of their money.Īs families assemble for feasts and celebrations, many commune around predinner platters of artisan cheeses. The 888-page tome hit shelves in mid-November, just as Americans began to prepare for their annual holiday gauntlet. The Oxford Companion to Cheese edited by Catherine Donnelly with a foreword by Mateo Kehler, Oxford Companions, 888 pages.Over the next two years, she worked with 10 editors and 355 writers in 35 countries to assemble and edit the world's most definitive cheese glossary. She spent a year teasing out 900 cheese-related topic headings, which defined the scope of the book.

Their query: Would she like to compile and edit the first-ever Oxford Companion to Cheese? The book would offer an encyclopedic overview of global cheese knowledge - history, tools, techniques and biology, along with hundreds of cheeses and the laws and traditions that govern them.ĭonnelly was already scheduled for a sabbatical and couldn't say no.

Three years ago, editors from Oxford University Press contacted University of Vermont nutrition and food science professor Catherine Donnelly. Since then, hundreds of books have examined cheese from dozens of angles, from how to make it to its stylistic diversity and cultural significance.

In 1477, Italian scholar Pantaleone da Confienza published the first known work of cheese literature - Summa Lacticiniorum (The Outline of Milk Products). From Gruyère to halloumi, Istrian and Monterery Jack, the world's history of cheese goes back 8,000 years. In Sicily's hills, find Fiore Sicano, aged months in cool caves near the Mediterranean. Acetic acid helps sour Gouda, Edam and Havarti - plate these with blue cheeses, and you're the toast of the party.

The Oxford Companion to Cheese by Mateo Kehler