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By Miranda BrownThesubject of this post may strike readers as odd. The combination of “Chinese”and “cheese” brings little to mind: neither memorable textures, nor fragrantflavors. Nothing, not even a single name like Parmesan or cheddar. The reasonfor the dearth of associations is obvious enough. Cheese is largely absent fromthe Chinese diet, nowadays found only in the periphery of the Chinese world, inplaces like Yunnanand Mongolia,where it is regarded as ethnic food for Tibetans and other minorities. Yetthings were different several hundred years ago. Chinese gastronomes once waxedpoetic about the taste and texture of cheese, professing their preference for itover elaborate delicacies. One poet, living in the thirteenth century, extolledthe flavor of cheese, saying, “No need for fancy morsels when there is cheese!”[1]Another, living a century later, asserted the superiority of dairy to beancurd. “While this old fellow is content with his tofu,” he wrote, “The delightgotten from cheese is double.”[2]&#160; These early foodies related recipes formanufacturing fresh, non-melting cheeses like paneer and the secrets forcreating stretched curds like mozzarella.Over the last several years, I haveexperimented with recipes for Chinese cheese, attempting to recapture theflavors and textures of centuries past. One recipe, for stretched-curd “milkthreads,” proved tricky. Preserved in a 16thc-cookbook, Song’sInstructions for Preserving Life (Songshiyangsheng bu 宋氏養生部),the recipe can be summarized like this: Heatcow’s milk until hot. Pourin a souring agent (akin to diluted vinegar), dripping it into the milkgradually.Oncea curd forms, collect it with a cotton wrap and shape into a disc.Takethe curd and place inside of a pot of scalding water. Ina separate vessel of scalding water, press it into the shape of a thin sheet ofcoarse silk.Placethe curd onto a stick, rolling and pulling. Putthe curd inside the scalding water in the pot, rolling and pulling three tofive more times while in the water. Rollout the resulting thread, placing it on a rack to dry in the sun (oil can be added to make the product smoother).[3]Thisrecipe assumes a working knowledge of the cheesemaking process. Hence, theomission of precise measurements. Readers must know beforehand the quantitiesof milk or souring agent, and the temperature of the milk or scalding water. Needlessto say, this presents a challenge to a modern cook who is unfamiliar withcheesemaking. My first attempts to produce the cheese failed, even with un-homogenized milk. The resulting curds, small and grainy, refused to stretch after being immersed in hot water. I sought help from Youtube, watching videos of Indian housewives making kalari, a non-rennet string cheese that was similar to Song’s stretched curd in terms of ingredients (cow’s milk, vinegar, hot water). I noticed that when coagulating the milk, the home cooks would test the temperature of the milk with their fingers, stopping the heating process once they could no longer keep their fingers in the liquid, rather than waiting for the milk to come to a soft boil as one would when making ricotta or paneer. This made me think that control of temperature was key to success, something hinted by Song’s own directions: heat the milk until hot, not boiling. Still, my subsequent efforts to make the cheese failed despite the care taken during the initial curdling process. I wondered if the pasteurization process, which requires that the milk be heated to at least 165° Fahrenheit, had something to do with my lack of success.My breakthrough came during a trip to California, where I was able to purchase raw or unpasteurized milk. I heated a quart of the raw milk gently until hot (110° F), then poured in a little diluted vinegar and shut off the heat, all the while continuously stirring the milk. Within minutes, the milk transformed into one large curd.   Figure 1: Raw milk coagulated with diluted vinegar . Image courtesy of the author.Iremoved the curd and heated a pot of water to simmering, and immersed the curdinto the scalding water for a few moments, removing it from the pot and kneading,repeating the process three times. Voilà,an elastic curd that stretched easily. Figure 2: The stretched curd with the author, made with a quart of milk. Image courtesy of the author.Lookingback at the experience with Chinese cheesemaking, I can say that the success ofmy experiment depended on a variety of factors: knowledge of arcane texts, watchingother cheesemakers at work, and many failed experiments in the kitchen. Miranda Brown teaches the history of Chinese science and food in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. Fascinated with recipes of all kinds, she is the author of the Art of Medicine in Early China (2015) and with Yang Yong, “The Wuwei Medical Manuscripts” (2017). She is currently writing a book about the premodern history of dairy in China. [1] Zhu Xi&#160; 朱熹, Zhuzi wenji 朱子文集 (Taipei: Defu wenjiao jijinhui, 2000), 3/110.[2] Yang,Lian 楊鐮 (chief editor), Quan Yuan shi 全元詩 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2013), 109.[3] For a translation of thewhole recipe, see MirandaBrown, “Mr. Song’s Cheeses, South China, 1368-1644.” Gastronomica: TheJournal of Critical Food Studies (Forthcoming).&#160; 