Cheese Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers
What is cheese?
A: Cheese is a food derived from milk that is produced in a wide range of
flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk
protein casein.
Cheese consists of proteins and fat from what?
A: Milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo,
goats, or sheep.
Most cheeses melt at what temperature?
A: Cooking.
Their styles, textures and flavors depend on the origin of
the what?
A: Milk (including the animal's diet), whether they have been pasteurized, the
butterfat content, the bacteria and
mold, the processing, and aging.
Herbs, spices, or wood smoke may be used as what?
A: Flavoring agents.
What can be added to produce the yellow to red
color of
many cheeses such as Red Leicester?
A: Annatto.
For a few cheeses, the milk is curdled by adding acids such
as what?
A: Vinegar or lemon juice.
Most cheeses are acidified to a lesser degree by what?
A: Bacteria.
The bacteria turns milk sugars into lactic acid, then the
addition of rennet completes the what?
A: Curdling.
Cheese is valued for its portability, long life, and high
content of what?
A: Fat, protein, calcium, and phosphorus.
Cheese is more compact and has a longer shelf life than
what?
A: Milk.
Generally speaking, hard cheeses last longer than what?
A: Soft cheeses, such as Brie or goat's milk cheese.
The long storage life of some cheese, especially if it is
encased in a protective rind, allows allows it to be sold when?
A: When prices are favorable.
What is a cheesemonger?
A: A specialist seller of cheese.
Becoming an expert in this field requires education and
years of tasting and experience, much like becoming an expert in what?
A: Wine or cuisine.
The cheesemonger is responsible for what aspects of the
cheese inventory?
A: All aspects from selecting the cheese menu, to purchasing, receiving,
storage, and ripening.
There is some debate as to the best way to store cheese,
but some experts say doing what, provides optimal results?
A: Wrapping it in cheese paper.
What is cheese paper?
A: Cheese paper is paper that is coated with a porous plastic on the inside, has
a layer of wax on the outside.
The combination of plastic on the inside and wax on the
outside protects the cheese by allowing condensation on the cheese to be wicked
away while preventing what?
A: Moisture in the cheese from escaping.
Cheese is an ancient food whose origins predate what?
A: Recorded history.
There is no conclusive evidence indicating where
cheesemaking what?
A: Began.
The practice of cheese making had spread within
Europe
prior to when?
A: Roman times.
The earliest evidence of cheese-making dates back to when?
A: About 5,500 BCE, in what is now Kujawy, Poland.
What evidence is there for cheese making that was found at
Kujawy?
A: Strainers with milk fats molecules have been found.
What is the earliest proposed dates for the origin of
cheese making?
A: From around 8000 BCE, when sheep were first domesticated.
Observation that making cheese in an animal stomach gave
better-textured curds may have led to the deliberate addition of what?
A: Rennet.
Early archeological evidence of
Egyptian cheese has been
found in what dating to about 2000 BCE?
A: Egyptian tomb murals.
The earliest cheeses were likely to have been quite what?
A: Sour and salty, similar in texture to rustic
cottage cheese or feta, a
crumbly, flavorful Greek cheese.
In Europe, where climates are cooler than the
Middle East,
the cheese required less what?
A: Salt for preservation.
With less salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable
environment for useful what?
A: Microbes and molds, giving aged cheeses their respective flavors.
