this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Food is so weird. Bread becomes toxic waste after 8 minutes of being opened, but there's probably some cheese species that gets fermented up the asshole of a mountain llama for 6 months, being stuffed back in after every bowel movement, and is still edible (if you're into that sort of thing) after 400 years of being left in a dank cave amongst the frothing remains of a rotting gerbil cemetery.
Cheese is weird because someone had to be like, well let's go ahead and store some milk in the stomach of an animal, but also they forgot about it under a chair for 3 months and then, upon finding it, thought, "well let's have a go anyway, despite it changing forms." And then eventually someone realized if you stuck it in certain caves it became delicious. So much human history just in that one food product there.
I think one theory is that it was central Asian horse-riding societies who started carrying milk on horseback, in saddlebags made out of animal bladders. The motion of the riding and the rennet left in the bladders churned the milk and turned it into cheese.
I remember also reading on a science magazine's site this possibility that the first cheese made by humans was more of yeast-based preparation, without animal milk, but i can't find the article mentioning that anymore.
Isn't it butter if it's churned?
It is but adding renet causes the milk fat to coagulate. Once that is done 90 degrees abpit the right temp for most cheese. The action of it moving it will cause tue curds to be broken down. The problem with this theory is the whey. Part of cheesemaking is removing the curd from the whey to allow the moisture to be removed. In a sealed vessel it cant go anywhere.
There's a ~~reindeer~~sheep cheese that is considered a delicacy that has actual maggots in it. Another orange cheese that has fucking mites! I don't mind my stinky cheese, but I'm not eating anything moving.
Casu marzu, "rotten cheese", NSFL. This is sheep's milk, not reindeer, but still. Horrifying.
For those not in the know, "rotten" puts it lightly, this cheese is made specifically to breed fly maggots which are eaten alive with the cheese.
It's not particularly legal to sell or manufacture for consumption due to the fact that yes, the maggots can in fact try to chew through your stomach and intestines before they die from digestion and cause severe intestinal distress.
They ain't the big, chewy grubs that Timon and Pumba might eat either, they're piles of teeny, tiny crawling masses of mini-maggots, so extremely horrifying. Nurgle cheese.
Thank you for warning me not to click this.
You beautiful bastard that was wonderful!