SECT. LXXXIX.—ON CHEESE.
All cheese is acrid, occasions thirst, is difficult to digest, forms bad chyme, and engenders stones. That is best which is new, spongy, soft, sweet, and has a moderate share of salt. The opposite kind is the worst.
Commentary. Hippocrates calls cheese flatulent and indigestible. Celsus also calls it flatulent, and ranks old cheese among the unwholesome articles of food. He speaks favorably, however, of soft new-made cheese. Dioscorides, in like manner, says that new-made cheese without salt is nutritious, good for the stomach, of easy distribution, forms flesh, and is moderately laxative. Old cheese, he adds, is constipating. Pliny describes the kinds in most repute when he lived. (Hist. Nat. xi, 97.) He says that salted cheese wastes the body, but that soft is nutritious, (xxviii, 34.) Varro, in like manner, says that soft and recent cheese is nourishing, and not astringent, but that the old and dry is the contrary. (De R. R. ii, 11.) The spongy cheese prepared from the first milk of a goat was reckoned very delicious. It was called colostrum. (Martial, Epigr. xiii, 33.)
Galen’s account of the nature and properties of cheese is so ample that our limits will not admit of doing justice to it in our brief abstract. (De Alim. iii, 17.) He remarks that milk, when it is converted into cheese, loses its watery part, and acquires heating properties, whence it becomes more apt to excite thirst, more indigestible, and unwholesome. He speaks most favorably of new-made cheese, and mentions that there was a kind much used by rich Romans, called Vatusicus, which was peculiarly excellent. As to consistence, the best cheese, he remarks, should be intermediate between the glutinous and the friable, and it ought to possess no distinct quality as to taste, unless, perhaps, a certain degree of sweetness. Aëtius, Oribasius, and Simeon Seth evidently adopt the views of Galen. Seth says that new cheese is laxative, and old astringent.
The Arabians deliver the same characters of cheese as their Grecian masters. Avicenna, Averrhoes, and Haly Abbas speak favorably of new cheese, as being of a cold and humid nature.
Hippocrates mentions a species of cheese prepared by the Scythians, from mares’ milk, and called by them hippace. (De Aer.) The same is noticed by Theophrastus (Hist. Pl. ix), and by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxv, 44.) Cheese variously prepared and served up was esteemed a great delicacy by the gourmands. See Athenæus (ix, 14.) It was taken towards the conclusion of a feast. (Id. xv, 22.)