Cheese in Middle Earth

[Rivvy Elf]

Yes, this is an actual topic. Food is a critical part in any world, and something as useful as cheese merits discussion. Which peoples of Middle Earth can we assume could've had the bright idea to eat moldy, infested with organisms, dried dairy-based products? What animals are there in middle-earth besides cows that could produce the milk that would make a cheese? Is it plausible for goblins and orcs to make/eat cheese?

[Boromir88]

I'll have to do some digging on some of the other races. But for sure we know that hobbits had cheese. Bilbo has it in An Unexpected Party. I think it would be safe to assume dwarves as well, since Bofur was the one who asked for it:

"And raspberry jam and apple-tart" said Bifur
"And mince-pies and cheese," said Bofur
"And pork-pie and salad." said Bombur

The Hobbit, An Unexpected Party

[Lirimaer]

Any culture that farms cattle or sheep produces dairy products, which in a pre-industrial society wouldn't be viewed as 'mouldy' until it was inedible and they wouldn't have the technology to know it was 'infested with organisms'. If you didn't produce such things yourself, you could always trade for them, or rob them, so I imagine it's perfectly feasible that most human-like creatures in Middle-earth would have some sort of cheese - including orcs, whose diet, I imagine, has given them a cast-iron constitution.

[Thalionwen Hunigfolm]

Yeah cheese is just a fermentation process and fermentation is one of the oldest food production/preservation methods, so I'd assume there were Middle Earth equivalents of cheese, yogurt, kefir, etc

But where do we stand on *ice cream*??? :smiley8:

[Eldy Dunami]

There is indisputably cheese in Rivendell:

Oh, what are you doing,
And where are you going?
Your ponies need shoeing,
The river is flowing!
Oh, tra-la-la-lally
Here down in the valley, ha! ha!

:smiley8:

(And yeah I guess they probably had the option of eating cheese if so inclined.)

[KingODuckingham]

I did a little bit of digging, and found the following references in roughly chronological order:

1) Tom Bombadil and Goldberry serve the hobbits cheese (and other foods) at their house in the Old Forest

2) Barliman Butterbur has cheese on the menu at the Prancing Pony in Bree.

3) Faramir serves Frodo and Sam a meal that has red cheese in Ithilien.

4) Beregond serves Pippin a meal in Gondor that includes cheese, although Pippin notices that all the 'kine' are gone from the Pelennor.

[geordie]

also, Pippin had for breakfast a small loaf and an 'inadequate' pat of butter, beside a glass of 'thin milk'.
I guess they must have driven some cattle or goats inside the City, to provide them though a siege?

[Boromir88]

KingODuckingham
4) Beregond serves Pippin a meal in Gondor that includes cheese, although Pippin notices that all the 'kine' are gone from the Pelennor.

The Steward, Vorondil, hunted the kine of Araw in Rhun, which if I recall correctly ended up being the horn of Gondor passed down from Vorondil to Boromir.

'Verily,' said Denethor. 'And in my turn I bore it, and so did each eldest son of our house, far back into the vanished years before the failing of the kings, since Vorondil father of Mardil hunted the wild kine of Araw, in the far fields of Rhun.' Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith

1. See page 755. The wild white kine that were still to be found near the Sea of Rhun were said in legend to be descended from the Kine of Araw, the huntsman of the Valar, who alone came often to Middle-earth in the Elder Days. Orome is the high-elven form of his name. Footnote in Appendix A: The Southern Line Heirs of Anarion

So cattle seemed to heavily populate in Rhun (which could also suggest Sauron's armies having cheese/dairy). It's speculated that the beasts that drove Grond were the Kine of Araw, but I don't think there's been anything to tie those together. I'm only aware of the brief instance in Siege of Gondor which of Grond says "great beasts drew it."

[Amhran]

A line from Tom Bombadil's tale of the history of Middle Earth in the chapter "In the House of Tom Bombadil" mentions sheep - "Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again." Beorn also has sheep in The Hobbit. Sheep's milk makes quite good cheese (Manchego being a delicious example). So there's that.

From the books it honestly sounds like they have all the same farm animals we do, and therefore probably did the same things with them. Cheese is quite ancient - and fairly widespread - as a food source so it's not that surprising that it should appear along with other cured animal products (Farmer Maggot serves "a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon").

[MistressofJesters]

A line from Tom Bombadil's tale of the history of Middle Earth in the chapter "In the House of Tom Bombadil" mentions sheep - "Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again." Beorn also has sheep in The Hobbit. Sheep's milk makes quite good cheese (Manchego being a delicious example). So there's that.

From the books it honestly sounds like they have all the same farm animals we do, and therefore probably did the same things with them. Cheese is quite ancient - and fairly widespread - as a food source so it's not that surprising that it should appear along with other cured animal products (Farmer Maggot serves "a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon").

I recently read Sigrud Undset's The Master of Hestviken, which takes place in medieval Norway, and there was SO MUCH cheesemaking. My mind immediately went there as soon as I saw this thread topic. Cheese is a great food because it keeps well, and when your dairy animals dry up in winter/are pregnant...it's good to have something preserved on hand!

[Lirimaer]

I came here prompted by a 'someone quoted you on 4th June' ... eager to see what cheese-related argument was ensuing.

Imagine my sadness to find it has disappeared.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Any culture that farms cattle or sheep produces dairy products, which in a pre-industrial society wouldn't be viewed as 'mouldy' until it was inedible and they wouldn't have the technology to know it was 'infested with organisms'. If you didn't produce such things yourself, you could always trade for them, or rob them, so I imagine it's perfectly feasible that most human-like creatures in Middle-earth would have some sort of cheese - including orcs, whose diet, I imagine, has given them a cast-iron constitution.

I watched this three-part (Australian) series called 'Stories from the Stone Age' and it really blew my mind. It recounts the story of the domestication of wheat in the Fertile Crescent alongside also goats. We get this first period of the Natufians which seems an ideal lifestyle. They are still nomads, but they have permanent camps by lakes and such like that they return to. They are hunter-gatherers, and eat anything they catch, but they have also learned to harvest wild wheat in abandunt quantities, and a couple of weeks work sets them up with flour for a year. And of course they work out how to plant their own wheat and begin the very first gardens.

Then there is some climate disaster and the survivors get by because of their gardens, and already they also have herds of goats too.

Then we have like 5,000 years of misery. Somehow, once you are caught in a farming lifestyle you cannot step off the wheel. You cannot go back. But the farmers were dying younger than their nomadic ancestors and were less healthy (lots of crippling of the body from agricultural labour). And all they had was wheat and goats.

After 5,000 years of this miserable village existence something happened. I don't know what. But suddenly they worked out (1) how to do trees - orchards, fruit; paradise! (2) they worked out how to do cheese - and yogurt, and all this 'secondary product' stuff. Pretty soon they went further and put oxen in front of a cart with wheels. And they were soon trading all over the place - long camel caravans with the merchandise packaged, sealed, and stamped - the mark of the stamps the origin of writing. Before you know it, cities have sprung up, and we find the very first evidence of organized religion - a place called Raul. In Raul there was religion, no army, but massive irrigation work of the kind that requires a whole society to be mobilized.

So from cheese and yogurt to the pyramids of ancient Egypt is only a few, rapidly taken steps. But it took 5,000 years before they worked out how to make cheese from goat's milk.

So, o bi-monthly visitor who gave me a kiss, I'm just saying that, at least according to this TV series, not any culture that farms cattle or sheep produces dairy products.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

By the way, that division in the Middle-east is also reflected - with a few thousand year lag - in north-west Europe. So in the UK there are two types of barrow. The long barrows are the earlier, and these were built by miserable farmers. The round barrows reflect the revolution.

On 'Stories of the Stone Age' they had Andrew Sherratt, the late Oxford Professor, explaining the difference between the two cultures of the two barrows. He is really worth listening to.

Sherratt explains how the round barrows housed the bones of all the ancestors. Inside the barrow were various rooms and in these rooms were piled all the legs, or all the skulls, of all the dead of the village over the countless generations. So this was the fate of the bones of your body too. On certain calendrical occasions the entire village would enter the barrow, which is designed so that the sun-light aligns at certain times of the year. Sherratt shows us some burners that they have found and suggests that inside the barrow some hallucinogenic herb was burned and the whole village had a religious rejoining with the ancestors.

The round barrows are a totally different world. They house the body of one great chieftain, who is buried with lots of precious things. They are built by those sometimes called the Beaker people, so-called because they introduce large beakers for the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The drinking is just one facet of a whole new consumer culture - these people make cheese too! This is a society where some people have much bigger beakers than others, and some have none at all.

[Lirimaer]

I don't just kiss any ol' person ... even if they do watch shows with historical assumptions stated as fact. But since that's at least 75% of documentaries nowadays, I shall let it slide.

I cannot claim any knowledge of dairy production 5K years ago. I just know people now, and they will put all sorts of stuff in their mouths, accidentally made or not. Thus, extrapolation. Assumption, if you will.

[Hanasian]

Would it be safe to assume they had Brie in Bree?

I did a little bit of digging, and found the following references in roughly chronological order:

1) Tom Bombadil and Goldberry serve the hobbits cheese (and other foods) at their house in the Old Forest

2) Barliman Butterbur has cheese on the menu at the Prancing Pony in Bree.

3) Faramir serves Frodo and Sam a meal that has red cheese in Ithilien.

4) Beregond serves Pippin a meal in Gondor that includes cheese, although Pippin notices that all the 'kine' are gone from the Pelennor.

Nice compilation!