Cheese is always produced at the end of a repast. In any other fashion the Italian proverb makes light of it:—
“Fromagio, peri, e pan
Pasto de vilan.”
According to La Bruyère Champier, who, when attached to the household of Francis I. in a medical capacity in 1560, wrote his treatise “De Re Cibariâ,” cheese was the principal production, and the principal aliment of the Auvergnats.
In the earliest times in France, several of the provinces made good cheeses. Pliny states that those of Nimes were much sought for in his time at Rome, as well as those of Mont Losere and the neighbourhood: but these cheeses would not keep, and were eaten fresh. Martial makes mention of the cheese of Toulouse.
Italian cheeses were not introduced into France till the time of Charles VIII. When this monarch on his expedition to Naples passed through Placentia, or Placenza, as it is more commonly called, the citizens presented him with several cheeses. But he was so astonished at the size of them (“aussi grand,” says Monstrelet, “quasi comme la largeur de meules à moulin”) that out of curiosity he sent one to the queen and to the Duke of Bourbon, who were then sojourning in Bourbonnais. It was found excellent, and henceforth came into general use. De Serres, who wrote in 1600, gave the first rank among foreign cheeses to Parmesan, and the second to Turkey cheeses, which arrived in France in bladders. Gontier, in his treatise “De Sanitate tuendâ,” written in 1688, mentions among excellent cheeses that of Gruyère.
Ninety or a hundred years ago, the taste as to cheese changed in Paris, and not long antecedent to the French Revolution of 1789, cheese was thought fit food only for Germans, English, or Italians.
The popular proverb then was—
“Jamais homme sage,
Ne mangea fromage.”