Ancient Roman Hand-Pressed Cheese
Fresh handmade cheese as Augustus might have enjoyed it with some bread and figs
City/Region: Rome
Time Period: 1st Century
Augustus, a man meticulous about his public image and about consolidating power as the first emperor of Rome, had rather simple tastes when it came to food. Suetonius, a Roman historian from the first and second centuries, wrote in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars that Augustus “preferred the food of the common people, particularly the coarse sort of bread, small fishes, fresh, moist, hand-pressed cheese, and green figs of the second crop.”
This recipe from the first century does indeed make a fresh, moist, hand-pressed cheese that is slightly nutty and is a clear predecessor to modern mozzarella. It’s just as historically accurate if you make it with goat, sheep, or cow milk, you just need to make sure that the milk is pasteurized, not ultra-pasteurized, and that it’s non-homogenized.
Note that this recipe is vegetarian if you use vegetable rennet.
“Cheese should be made of pure milk which is as fresh as possible…It should usually be curdled with rennet obtained from a lamb or a kid…and equally well with fresh sap from a fig-tree…The least amount of rennet that a pail of milk requires weighs a silver denarius…It is sprinkled with pounded salt…Some crush green pine nuts and mix them with the milk and curdle it in this way…Their method of making what we call ‘hand-pressed’ cheese is the best-known of all: when the milk is slightly congealed in the pail and still warm, it is broken up and hot water is poured over it, and then it is shaped by hand.”
Ingredients:
- 1/8 teaspoon rennet*
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1/2 cup (70 g) pine nuts
- 1/2 gallon (2 L) whole milk, not ultra-pasteurized, non-homogenized**
- 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt
*Animal and vegetable rennet are both historically accurate here. Use whichever you prefer.
**See notes below.
Instructions:
- Stir the rennet into the two tablespoons of water to dilute it.
- Lightly crush the pine nuts. You can do this with your fingers or in a mortar and pestle, but you don’t need to grind them. Some left whole is fine. Place them in a large pot and pour the milk over them. Let this sit for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, skim off any pine nut pieces floating on top.
- Set the pot over medium heat and, stirring constantly, bring it up to 95°F (35°C).
- Take the pot off the heat and add the rennet. You want to make sure it’s evenly incorporated in the milk, but you don’t want to stir it too much because the milk will start to curdle immediately and you don’t want to break the curds up too much. Very gently stir it in, and once it’s incorporated, cover it and leave it to sit.
- Modern versions of fresh cheese that use citric acid or vinegar only take about 10 to 12 minutes for the curds to separate from the whey, but mine took about 25 minutes. Even then, the curds weren’t as smooth as modern versions, but they separated enough from the whey to work. Cut the curds into about 1 inch (2.5 cm) pieces in a grid pattern across the top. Very gently stir them, trying not to break the curds. Let them sit for 5 minutes so that the curds fall to the bottom.
- Once the curds have sunk to the bottom of the pot, separate the curds from the whey by gently pouring the curds and whey through a strainer placed over a large bowl.
- Transfer the curds to a separate bowl. Discard the whey or save it for another use. Gently work the salt into the curds with your hands. The texture should be somewhere between a farmer’s cheese and a mozzarella.
- Let the salted curds sit for a few minutes while you bring a few cups of water to 170°F (75°C). You want enough water to completely cover the curds.
- Pour the hot water over the curds, just enough to cover them. Gently stir the curds in the hot water.
- If the water and curds are too hot to handle with your bare hands, use some gloves or a spoon. Gather the curds, which should be starting to melt together, and gently squeeze and form them into a ball. The amount of liquid that remains in the cheese is up to you. The more you squeeze out, the firmer the cheese will be. If, during this process, the cheese becomes too firm and falls apart, wet it with some of the hot water from the bowl and it will come back together. The whole process of shaping the cheese only takes a few minutes.
- It’s ready to serve forth right away with coarse bread and figs for a meal for Augustus, or you can keep it in the fridge for up to a few days.
Notes
- Ultra-pasteurization and homogenization make it so that the milk doesn’t produce cheese as well. Pasteurized is fine, just not ultra-pasteurized. Sometimes non-homogenized milk will say something like “cream top” on it.
- Goat milk, cow milk, and sheep milk are all historically accurate, so use what you like and what is available