FACTS: A Cow's Milk + Its Fourth Stomach = Cheese

By Erica

Both Kara and I (and probably the majority of you out there), thought that all you needed to make cheese was milk. There is, however, a second ingredient that is necessary: rennet. Rennet is collection of enzymes that mammals (that means you!) have in their stomachs to digest milk. In the cheese making process, it is what causes milk to split into curds and whey (Little Miss Muffet, &c &c). Today, about 60% of cheese produced in the US is made with genetically engineered rennet, but this was not always the case. Cheese, The Making of Wisconsin Tradition by Jerry Apps (a lovely little piece of propaganda "Courtesy of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board," and my reading material on the bus to work), tells me that in the 1800s, when cheese making was still a domestic chore, rennet was made by combining six gallons of water, loads of salt, 12 calf's stomachs "half emptied, rinsed, and salted", six lemons, and an ounce of cinnamon cloves. It was stored for around a year before it was used.

Most people would probably prefer that their cow stomach's were not involved in the making of their cheese, or at least that they didn't know about it. The Vegetarian Society writes that "The usual source of rennet is the stomach of slaughtered newly-born calves," and advocates for the use of other sources of rennet, like fungus, bacteria, or a petri dish. But there's something intriguing to me about getting the milk and rennet from the same source. It seems more natural. When you eat cheese made with cow rennet, it's like you're eating something that, more or less, exists already in a cow's fourth stomach somewhere.
























Moo.