Cheesemaking in the scientific revolution: A seventeenth-century royal society report on dairy products and the history of European knowledge

Sometime during the 1660s (the manuscript is not precisely dated), Royal Society correspondent William Jackson wrote a report to the fellows on the way in which cheese was made in Cheshire, one of the most renown regions for the production of good cheese in England. The five-page manuscript document details the work of the “dayrywomen” in all the phases of cheesemaking: from preparing rennet with the calves’ stomachs to the pressing and smoothing of the curds with the hands, from pressing the cheese in a mechanical press to expel the whey to making sure that cats chase away rats when the cheese is seasoned in the “cheese chamber.” The manuscript includes 7 images illustrating the tools of the trade. Why the fellows of the Royal Society were interested in cheesemaking? What was the significance of cheese as an object of knowledge in the context of the “new sciences” of the early modern period?