Founded in 2011, Homage2Fromage celebrates great cheese in a fun, informal and informative way at its pop-up monthly events that are held at Cold Bath Brewing in Harrogate and Yolk Farm in Minskip.

Each month Nick Copland, the man behind the cheese tasting events, picks a country and delves into some of its cheeses, helping locals to discover new cheese, meet like-minded cheese fans and hear some of the amazing stories behind cheese and cheesemaking.

Below Nick shares with The Stray Ferret readers five fascinating questions behind one of the nation’s favourite foods and tries to get to the bottom of them...

Cheese. Older than history, a much-loved food found in almost every Western cuisine, we’ve almost come to take it for granted.

But it is way more mysterious than you might think. Behind the familiar flavours and textures, traditions and recipes, lies an intriguing world bursting with irresistible enigma.

When was cheese first made? How did ancient people appear to magically create such a complex food? How can so many different types of cheese all start off as a simple bucket of milk? 

1. When was cheese invented?

No one knows where it all began – mainly because cheese is older than recorded history. Archaeological evidence tells us that cheese may have been produced as early as 6000 BC. The Greeks used a perforated clay pot to strain their cheese – called a formos – giving us the Italian word formaggio and the French fromage.

If you think about it, once you have milked an animal, you’ve only got a few hours to use that milk before the heat gets to it – there were no fridges in ancient times. 

Perhaps leftover milk was stored in places where naturally occurring enzymes and bacteria would have curdled the milk, leading to the birth of something a little like cottage cheese.

Hats off to whoever looked at the congealed, lumpy results and thought ‘I’m going to eat that anyway’, but times were hard. 

Mystery – still not certain

While the ancient origins are plausible, the exact "aha!" moment when someone first recognised cheese as a delicious and valuable food remains a tantalising mystery. It was most likely a combination of a happy accident and sheer desperation.

2. The birth of the blue

The exact origin of blue cheese is the stuff of legend. One rather popular story points to a cave in Roquefort, France, where a lonely shepherd was ‘distracted’ by a beautiful maiden and left his lunch of bread and sheep's milk cheese in a handy cave. 

When he finally got back – about a week later – he found his cheese riddled with blue veins and exuding rather a pungent aroma.

Intrigued (or still in the warm glow of his assignation) he tasted it. To his surprise, he found it surprisingly delicious. By leaving his cheese next to his bread he had allowed the soft cheese to be exposed to bread mould – which also thrives in the cool, humid cave environment. 

Mystery – mostly solved

While this shepherd's tale may be charming, it is most likely simply a cute legend. The archaeological evidence suggests blue cheeses may have emerged even earlier in other parts of the world. However, regardless of its precise origins, most blue cheese does contain Penicillium roqueforti, a culture closely related to bread mould – so the science is there, if not the romantic story. 

3. So how was Camembert invented?

Once the basics of cheese had been established, clever cheesemakers soon realised that you could get different kinds of tastier, more distinctive cheese depending on what you did with your curds once you had them. Soon, certain regions became famous for specific types of cheese.

Camembert, the iconic soft, bloomy rind cheese, can be traced back to a small village in Normandy, France – yes, also called Camembert. 

No one knows exactly when, but the records show it was probably sometime around 1790. A priest named Charles-Jean Bonvoust shared his cheesemaking skills with Marie Harel, a local farmer. With his guidance, she refined her existing techniques, leading to the development of the distinctive Camembert style.

Mystery – mostly solved

Whether or not this story is true, Camembert's rise to fame likely benefited from improvements in transportation during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This allowed the delicate cheese to be transported further distances, spreading its creamy goodness beyond the borders of Normandy, to Paris, and beyond. 

4. What is ‘cheddaring’?

If you thought cheddar was just the name of a type of cheese you’d be right of course. But ‘cheddaring’ itself is actually a process, uniquely developed by traditional British cheese makers in the West of England, to give their cheese the distinctive texture and sharpness we all know and love.

This simple but effective process involves cutting the cheese curd first, then scooping them into cloth-lined blocks and pressing them to allow the moisture to escape. 

These blocks would be stacked five or six high, so they were squeezed under their own weight, with the bottom block being rotated to the top every day so each wheel gets its turn. 

This gentle ’cheddaring’ process is said to allow the development of lactic acid to build within the curd, contributing to the signature tangy flavour, and giving artisan cheddar its distinctive flakey, crumbly texture. 

Mystery – solved

Cheddaring was invented and perfected as a way of helping remove the moisture from the cheese and allowing it to be matured for longer. 

It’s a time-consuming and labour-intensive process, but it's what sets cheddar apart from other cheeses. The cheese and the process are both named after the little village of Cheddar in Somerset. 

5. Why do some cheeses have holes?

Whenever you see cheese in a cartoon, it has holes. The holes have become associated with cheese, and we often see them in certain types of real cheese - especially Dutch cheeses and those from the Alps.

But where do these delightful little holes come from and why are they only in some cheeses and not others?

The holes are actually the result of a symphony of activity beneath the rind. During cheesemaking, cultures are added to the milk and these tiny organisms feast on the lactose sugar in the curds, breaking them down and producing lactic acid. 

This lactic acid lowers the pH of the cheese, allowing other cultures to bloom, and generate carbon dioxide gas as a byproduct. 

In many cheeses, this gas escapes easily as the cheese matures, but in the huge wheels of this type of cheese, the trapped carbon dioxide gas has nowhere to go, so it forms tiny bubbles within the cheese matrix. Then, as the cheese ages, these bubbles expand and eventually merge, creating the characteristic holes we know and love.

Mystery – solved

There are many bits of science at play inside cheese as it matures - the size and number of holes in cheese depends on things like the cultures used, the duration of ageing, the type of rind and the pressing techniques employed by the cheesemaker. 

Homage2Fromage offers subscribers to the Stray Ferret subscribers £5 off its events, both in Minskip and Harrogate.

You can redeem the offer here, or to browse the full range of fantastic offers and discounts from local businesses, visit the offers and competition page of the website.