diminished the importance of simple fresh dairy products that before the age of refrigeration could not be brought to market without spoiling.
Part of the reason that diversification triumphed was that the strikingly varied, broken-up geography of western Europe itself created an infinite number of environments. The seventeenth-centuryDutch, still engaged in the giant engineering projects that would give them fine tracts of grazing land reclaimed from the sea, led the way in commercial dairy specialization. From the Low Countries into southern Scandinavia or southward to the Alps, westward to the Atlantic coast of France, or beyond the North Sea in the diverse topographies of Great Britain, the production of countless characteristic—even unique—local cheeses or other dairy specialties consciously tailored to particular domestic or foreign markets became an ever more lucrative enterprise. As systematization advanced, the many northwestern European microclimates enabled farmers to develop a large range of cattle, goat, andsheep breeds formilking and also encouraged dairyists to work with a great spectrum of naturally occurring microflora—bacterial strains that might present some marvelously flavorful departure from the kinds in the next district or the next valley. (This is why things that may look alike on paper—for instance crème fraîche in Normandy and sourcream in southern Germany—often seem to have come from unrelated planets when you taste them.)
THE GROUND SHIFTS
With shrinking rural populations and the growing professionalization of cheesemaking after the late Middle Ages, fresh milk for drinking became a less prominent feature of everyday country diets. The focus of milk consumption gradually began to center on towns and cities, where it was increasingly sold for cash. As will be explained in “The Story of Modern Milk,” the perishability of milk would limit the shift until the nineteenth century. But meanwhile, other kinds of change were afoot in the kitchen as medieval culinary models yielded to new ideas.
Both sweet cream and (in some regions) cream cultured to local preferencesbecame valued as tokens of luxury in Northwestern Cow Belt cooking after the sixteenth century. Discerning consumers began to recognize schools of elegantbuttermaking. New families of butter-based sauces gained prominence, especially inFrance, while sweetcream began to find its way into ice creams and different kinds of sauces. In the west of England it was made into the renowned local specialty calledclotted “Devonshire” or “Cornish” cream. Cream in whipped form was agreat discovery of this period, though whipping techniques were at first limited by the comparatively primitive state of whisks (see this page ).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries unsouredmilk had not yet acquired the commanding position it was to achieve, but it became more popular both drunk by itself and in sweetened beverages, roux-based sauces, and sweet or savory custards. Thesoured counterpart seems to have undergone a corresponding decline by the nineteenth century. RuralScandinavian cooks retained the most, English and American cooks the least interest in different forms of soured milk with a real lactic-acid tang. Even in the British Isles and the new United States, a taste for truebuttermilk (often though not always ripened) survived for centuries, while other locales remained loyal to particular cultured milk specialties.
Fresh cheeses had varied fortunes. Most ceased to be made at home except in country districts. Regional preferences in fresh cheeses sold at market went in highly varied directions; as a result, something likeGerman Quark is only crudely interchangeable with English or North American opposite numbers. In France an impressive variety of forms appeared as objects of great culinary interest in their own right. This richness makes sense, because it was early French commercial dairyists who worked most intensively to
Part of the reason that diversification triumphed was that the strikingly varied, broken-up geography of western Europe itself created an infinite number of environments. The seventeenth-centuryDutch, still engaged in the giant engineering projects that would give them fine tracts of grazing land reclaimed from the sea, led the way in commercial dairy specialization. From the Low Countries into southern Scandinavia or southward to the Alps, westward to the Atlantic coast of France, or beyond the North Sea in the diverse topographies of Great Britain, the production of countless characteristic—even unique—local cheeses or other dairy specialties consciously tailored to particular domestic or foreign markets became an ever more lucrative enterprise. As systematization advanced, the many northwestern European microclimates enabled farmers to develop a large range of cattle, goat, andsheep breeds formilking and also encouraged dairyists to work with a great spectrum of naturally occurring microflora—bacterial strains that might present some marvelously flavorful departure from the kinds in the next district or the next valley. (This is why things that may look alike on paper—for instance crème fraîche in Normandy and sourcream in southern Germany—often seem to have come from unrelated planets when you taste them.)
THE GROUND SHIFTS
With shrinking rural populations and the growing professionalization of cheesemaking after the late Middle Ages, fresh milk for drinking became a less prominent feature of everyday country diets. The focus of milk consumption gradually began to center on towns and cities, where it was increasingly sold for cash. As will be explained in “The Story of Modern Milk,” the perishability of milk would limit the shift until the nineteenth century. But meanwhile, other kinds of change were afoot in the kitchen as medieval culinary models yielded to new ideas.
Both sweet cream and (in some regions) cream cultured to local preferencesbecame valued as tokens of luxury in Northwestern Cow Belt cooking after the sixteenth century. Discerning consumers began to recognize schools of elegantbuttermaking. New families of butter-based sauces gained prominence, especially inFrance, while sweetcream began to find its way into ice creams and different kinds of sauces. In the west of England it was made into the renowned local specialty calledclotted “Devonshire” or “Cornish” cream. Cream in whipped form was agreat discovery of this period, though whipping techniques were at first limited by the comparatively primitive state of whisks (see this page ).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries unsouredmilk had not yet acquired the commanding position it was to achieve, but it became more popular both drunk by itself and in sweetened beverages, roux-based sauces, and sweet or savory custards. Thesoured counterpart seems to have undergone a corresponding decline by the nineteenth century. RuralScandinavian cooks retained the most, English and American cooks the least interest in different forms of soured milk with a real lactic-acid tang. Even in the British Isles and the new United States, a taste for truebuttermilk (often though not always ripened) survived for centuries, while other locales remained loyal to particular cultured milk specialties.
Fresh cheeses had varied fortunes. Most ceased to be made at home except in country districts. Regional preferences in fresh cheeses sold at market went in highly varied directions; as a result, something likeGerman Quark is only crudely interchangeable with English or North American opposite numbers. In France an impressive variety of forms appeared as objects of great culinary interest in their own right. This richness makes sense, because it was early French commercial dairyists who worked most intensively to
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