Yarg Cheese History
It is well known that the origins of cheese making date back thousands of years but it may surprise you to know that nettles have been used in cheese production for hundred's of years. We found the following version of an ancient recipe by Gervise Markham for a cheese similar to our Cornish Yarg Cheese in a reference book that was originally published in the mid 16th Century.
Of Nettle Cheese
If you will have a very dainty nettle cheese, which is the finest summer cheese which can be eaten; you shall do in all things as was formerly taught in the new milk cheese compound; only you shall put the curd into a very thin cheese vat, not above half an inch or a little better deep at the most, and then when you come to dry them, as soon as it is drained from the brine you shall lay it upon fresh nettles and cover it all over with the same; and so lying where they may feel the air, let them ripen therein, observing to renew your nettles once in two days, and every time you renew them, to turn the cheese or cheeses, and to gather your nettles as much without stalks as may be, and to make the bed both under and aloft as smooth as may be, for the more even and fewer wrinkles that your cheese hath, the more dainty is your housewife every accounted.
