Baby Steps to Understanding Mexican Cheese
Milk’s leap toward immortality. That’s the standard quote to introduce anything on cheese. Well, milk in Mexico did not get that far toward immortality and what it did do has not been well explored until recently. So here I am embarking on an exploration of Mexican cheese. And all because I posted a theory about the Italian origins of one particular cheese, Oaxacan cheese, and because that produced a storm of emails. And because another reader is prodding me to write on Mexican cheese.
Well, cheese is one of my passions (dreams of toasted cheddar). And Mexico’s another. So this is actually super enticing.
As anyone who has traveled in Mexico knows, cheeses are found everywhere. More often than not they are soft, fresh, and used in various dishes of the “corn kitchen.” No doubt about it, as soon as cattle and goats were introduced by the Spanish, not only the criollos (Mexican born Spanish) but also the indigenous took up cheese with gusto.
But because most of these cheeses are soft and fresh, until recently they have only been distributed locally. If you have ever tried to get an idea of where and what the cheeses are, you’ll know it has been just about impossible. They just weren’t recorded.
Now, hurrah, we’re moving to much better records. The first sign was an article in Buena Mesa, the food page of the Mexican newspaper Reforma. It featured a terrific full page color map of Mexico with the thirty most important cheeses located, photographed, described, and with the commonest uses identified. All this thanks to Abraham Villegas de Gante, an expert in agricultural engineering at the National Agricultural University in Chapingo to the north of Mexico City and Carlos Pereza, a distinguished artisanal cheese maker ifrom Querétaro in Central Mexico.
Here’s their list.
- Chihuahua menonita
- Chihuahua no menonita
- Asadero
- de Tetilla
- Adobera
- Jococque
- Panela
- Cotilla (cotija)
- Chongos
- Sierra
- de Epazote
- Tipo manchego mexicano
- de Tenate
- Morral
- Guaje
- Trenzado
- de Rued
- Ranchero de Veracruz
- de Hoja
- Chapingo
- de Cincho
- Molido de aro
- Molido y cremosa
- Oaxaca
- de Aro
- Bola de ocozingo
- Crema tropical
- de Sal
- de Poro
- Sopero.
A few comments.
This doesn’t quite map on to the standard grocery store categories.
More to say on jococque.
Chongos are always served in syrup as they say. A sort of dessert cheese.
The researchers are trying to get denominación de origin for some of them. Cotilla, a mature grating cheese from Jalisco and Morelia, is more or less ready to go.
They make passing reference to the Mennonite origins of northern harder cheeses and to the Italian origins (aka mozzarella) of Oaxacan cheeses, something that can drive Oaxacans bats.
They give dire warnings about imitations. These are desperately needed. Check the labels of most of the cheeses in the grocery stores and they are made with vegetable fats, milk powder, and casein.
They don’t include foreign cheeses made in Mexico commercially such as Gouda.
They do not include two other very important and growing cheese-making enterprise.
(1) Goat cheeses (will the world sink under the weight of goat cheeses?)
(2) wonderful European-style cheese made by small cheese makers. Remo, just outside San Miguel, supplies Italian cheeses to the Italian Embassy.
If you want more (though not history) there’s a new book on Mexican cheeses by some of the greatest experts including Abraham Villegas de Gante, professor of agroindustrial engineering at Mexico’s premier agricultural research station, the Universidad Autonomá de Chapingo.
Edit. The first author is Fernando Cervantes Escoto.
I have it on order so more to come. And that will take us back to the origins of the cheese of Oaxaca.
Interesting post Rachel. Myself and my wife Priya Raju have wondered a lot about why there is not much Indigenous cheese in India?we only have a cottage cheese. She came up with the hypothesis that people in cultures that are predominantly lactose intolerant would have invented cheese. Given that India has a very high proportion of lactose tolerant people cheese is not a necessity. Moreover we use clarified butter (“Ghee”) a lot which could be another reason for not using cheese. Any thoughts?
I’ve been visiting Mexico regularly since the early 1990’s and lived here full time since I bought my first house in 1999. My observation is that, except for wealthy people using foreign models, cheese is not actually eaten in Mexico. A lot of it is used but as an ingredient in a number of dishes. With the increasing appearance of large chain food stores with their wider selection of both Mexican regional and foreign foods, cheese is taking on a different place in the larder and at the table.
In traveling I’ve noticed that the nations that lead the pack in actually EATING cheese are France, where it is eaten after a meal with some alcoholic libation, and the USA, where it is eaten before the meal with some alcoholic libation. Both countries use crackers or bread to convey the cheese, with fingers, from the plate to the mouth.
I had thought that cheese was invented to preserve milk before refrigeration and ghee was invented to preserve butter before refrigeration. I’ve spend several months in India and am familiar with ghee but I don’t see how using it would be exclusive to cheese? or how either might substitute for the other? Please expand on this connection. THX
Most cheese lacks high levels of lactose, as do most traditional dairy products, either through the removal in whey or through bacterial action, so I’m not so sure how much lactose tolerance actually plays in the distribution of dairy culture.
Kay,
Thanks. You are right just using ghee does not prevent using cheese. The only reason i mentioned it is because milk, ghee and yoghurt are so popular in india that most of the dairy production is geared to making these, leaving little for the making of cheese.
Ah! yes! the fabulous yogurts available in India!
THX4, Rajagopal, this helpful explanation.
Making cheese or other dairy products is not such an obvious thing to do or a necessary invention. Although now famous for beef bbq, Korea has no indigenous dairy product culture. No cheese, butter, or yogurt.
Charles Perry told me that Turkish soldiers during the Korean war were terribly concerned about finding yogurt. Cows, but no milk or dairy products?
We didn’t have a milk industry back then. The native hanwoo breed of cattle, were used mostly as draft animals. Beef was for the wealthy until fairly recently.
Very interesting Ji-Young. To have cows, but not use milk is unusual indeed. Do you know whether Koreans are generally lactose intolerant? That may explain why they may have avoided milk.
Numbers vary, but most studies that I’ve read conclude that at least 80% of Koreans are lactose intolerant.
There are cows and there are dairy cows. Native Korean hanwoo cows tend to have lower milk production rates.
Dairy cows are a fairly recent introduction. A few came in with Japanese colonialism, then more during the past few decades with Korea’s growing beef industry.
When I was a child in Seoul (1969-1975) goat’s milk was more commonly available commercially than cow’s milk was. That’s relative availability, goat’s milk was also uncommon, just not as rare as cow’s milk. When I first went back to visit in 1977 or 1978 the only place my parents had to buy cow’s milk for me at a black market store that sold Western foodstuffs.