The Oxford Companion to Cheese

The discovery of cheese is a narrative at least 8,000 years old, dating back to the Neolithic era. Yet, after all of these thousands of years we are still finding new ways to combine the same four basic ingredients--milk, bacteria, salt, and enzymes--into new and exciting products with vastly different shapes, sizes, and colors, and equally complex and varied tastes, textures, and, yes, aromas. In fact, after a long period of industrialized, processed, and standardized cheese, cheese makers, cheese mongers, and most of all consumers are rediscovering the endless variety of cheeses across cultures. The Oxford Companion to Cheese is the first major reference work dedicated to cheese, containing 855 A-Z entries on cheese history, culture, science, and production.