CHEESE OMELETTE

6 eggs
Cheese
Chopped parsley
Chopped thyme

Grate some rich old cheese, and having mixed the omelette as usual, stir in the cheese with a swift turn or two of the whisk, and at the same time some chopped parsley and thyme. If you beat long the cheese will separate the milk from the eggs. Cook at once.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: Blessed are the cheesemakers, as someone once observed, but not so blessed are those who seek out information as to how "rich old cheese" was made in 19th century America. It was a specialized trade requiring some unusual items not available to the average homeowner either rural or urban, such as for instance a handy cave in which to store the cheeses during the long ripening period required by the process. Then as now the best cheesemakers were often members of monastic religious orders, whose need for immediate cash flow was small and amount of time available to devote to ripening was great. If those cheesemakers were not themselves blessed, at least their cheeses were.

The only recipes printed in books of the time were for cottage or pot cheeses, intended for use after only a very brief storage or none at all. Like butter, they served in those days before mechanical refrigeration primarily as a storage medium for milk during those times of year when there was a surplus beyond what cows needed for their calves.

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