In 1509, Platina, although an Italian, in speaking of good cheeses, mentions those of Chauny, in Picardy, and of Brehemont, in Touraine; Charles Estienne praises those of Craponne, in Auvergne, the angelots of Normandy, and the cheeses made from fresh cream which the peasant-women of Montreuil and Vincennes brought to Paris in small wickerwork baskets, and which were eaten sprinkled with sugar.  The same author names also the rougerets of Lyons, which were always much esteemed; but, above all the cheeses of Europe, he places the round or cylindrical ones of Auvergne, which were only made by very clean and healthy children of fourteen years of age.  Olivier de Serres advises those who wish to have good cheeses to boil the milk before churning it, a plan which is in use at Lodi and Parma, “where cheeses are made which are acknowledged by all the world to be excellent.”

The parmesan, which this celebrated agriculturist cites as an example, only became the fashion in France on the return of Charles VIII. from his expedition to Naples.  Much was thought at that time of a cheese brought from Turkey in bladders, and of different varieties produced in Holland and Zetland.  A few of these foreign products were eaten in stews and in pastry, others were toasted and sprinkled with sugar and powdered cinnamon.

“Le Roman de Claris,” a manuscript which belongs to the commencement of the fourteenth century, says that in a town winch was taken by storm the following stores were found:—­: 

  “Maint bon tonnel de vin,
  Maint bon bacon (cochon), maint fromage a rostir.”

  ("Many a ton of wine,
  Many a slice of good bacon, plenty of good roasted cheese.”)

[Illustration:  Table Service of a Lady of Quality

Fac-simile of a miniature from the Romance of Renaud de Montauban, a ms. of fifteenth century Bibl. de l’Arsenal]

[Illustration:  Ladies Hunting

Costumes of the fifteenth century.  From a miniature in a ms. copy of Ovid’s Epistles.  No 7231 bis. Bibl. nat’le de Paris.]

Besides cheese and butter, the Normans, who had a great many cows in their rich pastures, made a sort of fermenting liquor from the butter-milk, which they called serat, by boiling the milk with onions and garlic, and letting it cool in closed vessels.

[Illustration:  Fig. 99.—­Manufacture of Cheeses in Switzerland.—­Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Cosmographie Universelle” of Munster, folio, Basle, 1549.]

If the author of the “Menagier” is to be believed, the women who sold milk by retail in the towns were well acquainted with the method of increasing its quantity at the expense of its quality.  He describes how his froumentee, which consists of a sort of soup, is made, and states that when he sends his cook to make her purchases at the milk market held in the neighbourhood of the Rues de la Savonnerie, des Ecrivains, and de la Vieille-Monnaie, he enjoins her particularly “to get very fresh cow’s milk, and to tell the person who sells it not to do so if she has put water to it; for, unless it be quite fresh, or if there be water in it, it will turn.”