An Inexperienced Approach to East Asian Cheesemaking
Introduction
Around 65-70% of people globally are lactose intolerant [1]. In United States media, however, perspectives surrounding lactose intolerance define it as a “deficiency instead of the norm” [2]. Western writers since the mid-nineteenth century have interpreted the purported absence of dairy in East Asia as a sign of the inferiority of the East Asian race, especially for Chinese civilization [3].
Miranda Brown challenges this notion in her paper titled Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368-1644, which details a cheese recipe from China dating from 1504 [4]. This rebuttal turns the lactose-intolerant argument on its head by emphasizing that dairy products can and were enjoyed by people who were lactose intolerant. Mr. Song’s recipes generally remove lactose through curdling or other methods, allowing dairy to be consumed and further questioning this symbolism of supposed inferiority [5].
Mr. Song approached this recipe with the expectation that his audience held experience with cheesemaking. We, meanwhile, attempted the recipe with no cheesemaking experience. This was done to better understand the importance of one-on-one knowledge transfer and the recipe creation process. Furthermore, contrasting our experience with Miranda Brown’s experiments, we reveal the audience of Mr. Song’s cheeses and the cheesemaking knowledge base already present in China during Mr. Song’s time, further supporting Brown’s argument that dairy products have been prevalent in China throughout the ages.
The Roots of Chinese Cheese
In China, cheese has been believed to have arrived with the Mongols and left with the Mongols. This would mean that cheese was only around for 150 years in China. However, cheese can be traced back to medieval China, where farmers raised cows for their milk as early as the 6th century AD and consumed cheese as a regular part of their diet in Northwest China [6]. In September 2024, there was even evidence of cheese found in China that traces back to 3,600 years ago [7]. Additionally, with the discovery of Mr. Song’s cookbook, it is clear that cheese did not disappear from China when the Mongols left in 1368. Mr. Song’s Book of Nourishing Life was written circa 1504, which means that cheese and recipes containing cheese were still being used more than a century after the Mongols left.
Mr. Song came from the city of Songjiang, located just south of Shanghai in the Jiangnan region. It is important to note that Songjiang is considered part of Southern China because according to Brown, Historian H.T. Huang “attributed the purported decline of milk to the growing importance of the south” [8]. Thus, Huang, along with many other scholars, has claimed southern China to have been averse to the usage of cheese and the reason why cheese became absent in the popular Chinese diet. The fact that Mr. Song was from Songjiang dismantles this claim as his cookbook reveals a myriad of recipes containing cheese.
The Book of Nourishing Life reflects the Song clan’s family culinary tradition with its preservation of Song Xu’s and his mother’s recipes. Madame Song was an expert chef in Beijing and provided her son with oral instructions on the dishes she made. She had “acquired a penetrating understanding of gastronomy through her travels, discovering ‘what was common to all the flavors under heaven and what things connected them’” [9]. Many other chefs could have garnered culinary knowledge but were unable to record what they learned in writing. The efforts of Song Xu and his great-grandnephew who gathered his writings and recipes allowed for a deeper understanding of the roots of cheese in China.
During the Ming Dynasty, the Jiangnan region was famous for its cosmopolitanism and culture of connoisseurship. The region was “one of the wealthiest in the Ming empire, if not the wealthiest” and “the diet of Jiangnan’s city dwellers…reflected such prosperity” [10]. With the abundance of wealth, Jiangnan residents could afford to indulge in experimental cuisine and expand their palette with foods like cheese. According to Song’s cookbook, cheese was used in different types of dishes to complement other foods or eaten alone as the main dish. One recipe details the preparation of clear-cooked carp with cheese. Song’s combination of fish and cheese “made sense in the context of Ming-dynasty Jiangnan [as] Jiangnan was best known in those days for its abundant aquatic resources and seafood-laden cuisine” [11]. Therefore, because of Jiangnan’s prosperous and extravagant culture, cheese found its place in many different recipes, as shown in Song Xu’s Book of Nourishing Life.
Original Mr. Song’s Cheese Recipe
Mr. Song’s original recipe, translated by Miranda Brown, is as follows: “Gather cow’s milk and pour it into a pot, cooking it until hot, then take the souring agent and drip it into the milk little by little. Once [the curds] form, collect them with a cotton wrap to form a cake” [12].
Materials
The following materials were available to us for cheesemaking:
Cuisinart 1 Quart Pot
Walfos Colander
Thermopro Meat Thermometer
The pot served as the cooking container while the colander served as a substitute for the cotton wrap to filter the whey out. The Thermopro Meat Thermometer allowed us to make a quantitative analysis of the temperature of the milk during heating, specifically noting the temperature at which we deemed the milk became ‘hot.’
Food Items
The following food items were available to us for cheesemaking:
Rice Vinegar
Schnucks Brand Pasteurized Whole Milk
Rice vinegar was used because it was the most similar food available to the original souring agent, which was made by souring “cooked millet or rice” and acted “like a diluted vinegar” [13]. Creating the original souring agent would have provided its own hardships, with the interpretation of which rice was best, application techniques, and the potential to develop mold and other harmful microorganisms during the souring time. As a result, rice vinegar was chosen over the original souring agent.
The type of milk was chosen because unpasteurized, East Asian milk is unattainable in St. Louis, Missouri (where the experiment took place). Pasteurized milk in general is difficult to obtain, so this was a justified substitution.
Procedure
We started by pouring the milk, about ¼ gallon, into the pot. Then, we began heating the milk. Doing a quick Google search online, we found that milk generally needs to be heated to around 190 degrees Fahrenheit to allow for curdling by the souring agent [14]. After heating at this temperature, we observed the following texture change:
Figure 1
Displays the texture change upon heating the milk to 176 degrees Fahrenheit. A layer of skin began to form on the top of the milk. Photo credits to Alex Fang.
As seen in Figure 1, a slight film or skin developed over the milk. Afterward, we began adding rice vinegar drop by drop while reducing the heat. This led to a second texture change:
Figure 2
Displays the second texture change upon adding an adequate amount of rice vinegar. The milk begins to clump together, leaving a slightly yellow clear liquid (whey) behind. Photo credits to Alex Fang.
After this texture change (Figure 2) we turned off the heat and stirred the pot gently until the curds formed together into a singular mass. Then, we poured the liquid through a colander, leaving just the cheese.
We then replicated the experiment using no thermometer and instead relying on the texture change.
Results
After our procedure, we obtained the following cheese:
Figure 3
Displays the cheese after straining. It is quite wet, yet holds a crumbly consistency. Photo credits to Alex Fang.
Figure 4
Shows a serving presentation of the final result. Photo credits to Alex Fang.
Discussion & Comparison
After completing our procedure and observing the results, we compared our cheese with Miranda Brown’s cheese. Miranda Brown approached Mr. Song’s recipes with an understanding of cheesemaking, eventually creating the more complicated “milk threads” that are discussed in Song’s Book of Nourishing Life [15]. Brown’s production differed from ours in the temperature used (110 degrees Fahrenheit), the material (raw milk from California), and the technique (shutting off the heat while the first drops of diluted vinegar were added) [16]. This created a stretchy texture and mozzarella-like consistency that allowed Brown to create ‘milk threads’ through extensive kneading, stretching, and some scalding water [17].
As for our expectations, we expected cheesemaking to be elaborate and take a long time, and also create the gooier, mozzarella-flavored cheese we had heard about. In actuality, making cheese was quite simple, using only two ingredients and taking about 5-10 minutes after assembling the ingredients.
After witnessing the first texture change, for us it made sense that the heat of the milk was not specified in the original recipe, as the texture change would serve as a benchmark for the cheese creation. Replicating the experiment using no thermometer and instead relying on the texture change, we were able to produce the same cheese result as the first experiment. Comparing with Miranda Brown’s approach and doing further research, however, we discovered that much lower temperatures, perhaps 115 degrees Fahrenheit, would produce the gooier cheese expectations that we held [18]. If a texture change could not be used to ascertain the heat required to make Mr. Song’s cheese, what could be used? It seems that only experience and familiarity with the correct temperature after trial and error or learning from a cheesemaker would give access to this information.
Also, upon further research, we discovered that pasteurized milk was not a reasonable substitute to recreate Mr. Song’s cheese, as it lacks the fat and clumping characteristics of unpasteurized milk that creates the sought-after texture. This is a difference between material accessibility in modern versus older times rather than an indication of a lack of knowledge.
Finally, the ambiguity of when to turn off the heat when the rice vinegar is added also underlines the experience required to replicate Mr. Song’s cheese.
The errors we made during our cheesemaking process highlighted not only that the dedicated audience was experienced cheesemakers, but also that experience with cheesemaking was still prevalent in China around 150 years after the Mongols had left. Song Xu’s recipe demonstrates that cheese was ingrained in Chinese culture, and disproves the false understanding that dairy was largely absent from East Asia.
Bibliography
[1]: Kaufman, Eli J, and Catherine Tan. “White as Milk: Biocentric Bias in the Framing of Lactose Intolerance and Lactase Persistence.” Wiley Online Library, 26 Aug. 2022, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9566.13528. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.
[2]: Kaufman, Eli J, and Catherine Tan. “White as Milk: Biocentric Bias in the Framing of Lactose Intolerance and Lactase Persistence.”
[3]: Valenze, Deborah. 2011. Milk: A Local and Global History. NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press.
[4]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” Gastronomica, vol. 19, no. 2, 2019, pg. 32, doi:10.1525/gfc.2019.19.2.29.
[5]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 29
[6]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 29
[7]: Hunt, Katie. “DNA from 3,600-Year-Old Cheese Sequenced by Scientists.” CNN, Cable News Network, 25 Sept. 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/09/25/science/oldest-cheese-ancient-dna-china-mummies/index.html. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.
[8]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 29
[9]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 31
[10]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 39
[11]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 34
[12]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 32
[13]: Brown, Miranda. “Mr. Song’s Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644.” pg. 32
[14]: MLYIN. “Homemade Farmer’s Cheese.” Allrecipes, 14 Nov. 2023, www.allrecipes.com/recipe/73981/home-made-farmers-cheese/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.
[15]: Brown, Miranda. “Making Mr. Song’s Cheeses.” The Recipes Project, Hypotheses, 1 Oct. 2019, recipes.hypotheses.org/13911. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.
[16]: Brown, Miranda. “Making Mr. Song’s Cheeses.”
[17]: Brown, Miranda. “Making Mr. Song’s Cheeses.”
[18]: Taylor, Matt. “How to Make Mozzarella Cheese 2 Ingredients Without Rennet | Homemade Cheese Recipe.” YouTube, 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=aewWUjnPSAs. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.