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قراءة كتاب The Complete Book of Cheese
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class="stanza">May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great world's show at Paris.
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek; then song or glees
We could not sing, oh, Queen of Cheese.
An ode to a one hundred percent American mammoth was inspired by "The Ultra-Democratic, Anti-Federalist Cheese of Cheshire." This was in the summer of 1801 when the patriotic people of Cheshire, Massachusetts, turned out en masse to concoct a mammoth cheese on the village green for presentation to their beloved President Jefferson. The unique demonstration occurred spontaneously in jubilant commemoration of the greatest political triumph of a new country in a new century—the victory of the Democrats over the Federalists. Its collective making was heralded in Boston's Mercury and New England Palladium, September 8, 1801:
A thousand heifers come;
The milkmaid muffles up her head,
And wakes the village hum.
Through whitened canvas pours;
The dyeing pots of otter good
And rennet tinged with madder blood
Are sought among their stores.
Is loaded on the jade,
The stumbling beast supports the load,
While trickling whey bedews the road
Along the dusty glade.
The arid deserts roam,
Through trackless sands undaunted tread,
With skins of water on their head
To cheer their masters home,
His precious baggage bore;
Old misers e'en forgot their gain,
And bed-rid cripples, free from pain,
Now took the road before.
Upon her saddle horn,
Rode up in haste to see the sight
And aid a charity so right,
A pauper so forlorn.
Upon the verdant-grass
To let the vast procession through
And Elder J. L. pass.
In musing posture stood,
Invoked a blessing from the skies
To save from vermin, mites and flies,
And keep the bounty good.
From polished steel receives,
And shining nymphs stand still a while,
Or mix the mass with salt and oil,
With sage and savory leaves.
With naked arms and crown,
Embraced, with hardy hands, the scoop,
And filled the vast expanded hoop,
While beetles smacked it down.
With heft immense, drew down;
The gushing whey from every seam
Flowed through the streets a rapid stream,
And shad came up to town.
This spirited achievement of early democracy is commemorated today by a sign set up at the ancient and honorable town of Cheshire, located between Pittsfield and North Adams, on Route 8.
Jefferson's speech of thanks to the democratic people of Cheshire rings out in history: "I look upon this cheese as a token of fidelity from the very heart of the people of this land to the great cause of equal rights to all men."
This popular presentation started a tradition. When Van Buren succeeded to the Presidency, he received a similar mammoth
cheese in token of the high esteem in which he was held. A monstrous one, bigger than the Jeffersonian, was made by New Englanders to show their loyalty to President Jackson. For weeks this stood in state in the hall of the White House. At last the floor was a foot deep in the fragments remaining after the enthusiastic Democrats had eaten their fill.
Three
Foreign Greats
For which we give Thee thanks on bended knees.
Let them be fat or light, with onions blent,
Shallots, brine, pepper, honey; whether scent
Of sheep or fields is in them, in the yard
Let them, good Lord, at dawn be beaten hard.
And let their edges take on silvery shades
Under the moist red hands of dairymaids;
And, round and greenish, let them go to town
Weighing the shepherd's folding mantle down;
Whether from Parma or from Jura heights,
Kneaded by august hands of Carmelites,
Stamped with the mitre of a proud abbess.
Flowered with the perfumes of the grass of Bresse,
From hollow Holland, from the Vosges, from Brie,
From Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Italy!
Red Cheshire, and the tearful cream Gruyère.
OF A POEM BY M. Thomas Braun
Symphonie des Fromages
A giant Cantal, seeming to have been chopped open with an ax, stood aside of a golden-hued Chester and a Swiss Gruyère resembling the wheel of a Roman chariot There were Dutch Edams, round and blood-red, and Port-Saluts lined up like soldiers on parade. Three Bries, side by side, suggested phases of the moon; two of them, very dry, were amber-colored and "full," and the third, in its second quarter, was runny and creamy, with a "milky way" which no human barrier seemed able to restrain. And all the while majestic Roqueforts looked down with princely contempt upon the other, through the glass of their crystal covers.
In 1953 the United States Department of Agriculture published Handbook No. 54, entitled Cheese Varieties and