
Curd Knife, 1875, David G. Young, steel and wood, H: 6.5″ X 2 “, The Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY, Gift of The Young Family, F0141.1987.
Cheese is delicious. With the enticing and robust flavor that only fatty foods can provide, vitamin-rich and protein-filled cheese has long been an American favorite. The cheese industry in the United States was worth approximately 14.92 billion dollars in 2015, and the state of Wisconsin alone produced approximately 3,239,035 thousand pounds of cheese in the last year. [1] To see how the cheese industry reached such staggering heights, we must take a look at the tools that made cheese making possible in the first place.
From the earliest Massachusetts Bay colonists in the 1600s, Americans have been making cheese and gradually improving the manufacture process over the nation’s history.[2] This early era of cheese making saw the small-batch manufacture of cheese in individual farm kitchens and dairies, with households each producing their own varieties. English, Dutch, and German settlers throughout Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania all brought their own heritage recipes and dairy sources to bear on early American cheese making. This stratified and specialized cheese production resulted in diverse flavors, hues, textures, and qualities across the marketplace. [3]
As the nation began to spread westward in the early 1800s, so too did the production of cheese. New York gradually supplanted Massachusetts as the US’ chief diary producer as more settlers moved into the plentiful arable land in the Mohawk Valley of Upstate New York, and the Erie Canal attracted more people to the state. By 1808, Herkimer County, NY established the beginnings of its reputation for cheese production, as “all who adopted [dairying and cheesemaking] flourished at it at once…” [4] By 1849, Herkimer County alone was producing 10 percent of all cheese in the US annually. [5]
An area cheesemaker from Rome, NY named Jesse Williams forever changed the industry upon opening the first cheese factory in 1851. Over the next 16 years, New York state saw the establishment of 499 cheese factories.[6] These plants utilized newer technologies, including the dairy steamer, a multi-source milk blending technique, and a distinctive way to press cheese known as the “Herkimer method.” [7]
One indispensable tool to the process of producing cheese, the steel curd knife, played an equally crucial role in both the Willaims-style manufacture of cheese and the independent mode of cheese production.[8] This curd knife, an example of which is pictured above, was first designed by Herkimer County native David G. Young. This curd knife represents Young’s entrepreneurship and innovation at a pivotal time in the shifting dairy and cheese industry.
The knives D.G. Young pioneered “nearly displaced all the former contrivances of use,” owing to its efficient and clean method of cutting curd (the solid dairy product that is pressed and made into cheese) and separating it from liquid whey. [9] As manufacture and sale of farm cheeses slowed to almost a standstill and dairying began to shift yet further west, the innovation of this Herkimer curd knife endured in Wisconsin and Ohio: the new frontiers of American ‘dairyland.’[10]
Kate Rowell
3.26.18
Footnotes
[1] “Top U.S. States’ Cheese Production 2016 | Statistics,” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/195764/top-10-us-states-for-cheese-production-2008/.
[2] “History of Cheese,” The National Historic Cheesemaking Center, http://www.nationalhistoriccheesemakingcenter.org/history-of-cheese/.
[3] Loyal Durand Jr., “The Migration of Cheese Manufacture in The United States.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 42:4, 264.
[4] Frederick A. Rahmer, Jesse Williams, Cheesemaker, (New York: Steffen Publishing Company, 1971), 6.
[5] Ibid, 8.
[6] Loyal Durand Jr., “The Migration of Cheese Manufacture in The United States.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 42:4, 272.
[7] The Oxford Companion to Cheese, Edited by Catherine Donnelly, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016).
[8] Xerxes Addison Willard, Willard’s Practical Dairy Husbandry: A Complete Treatise on Dairy Farms and Farming,–Dairy Stock and Stock Feeding,–Milk, Its Management and Manufacture Into Butter and Cheese,–History and Mode of Organization of Butter and Cheese Factories,–Dairy Utensils, Etc,” (New York: Excelsior Publishing House, 1877), 214.
[9] Annual Report of the Secretary of the Maine Board of Agriculture, Volume 7, 1861, Maine Board of Agriculture, (Augusta: Stevens and Sayward, Printers of the State, 1862), 103.
[10] Annual Report of the Wisconsin Dairymen’s Association, Volume 9, Wisconsin Dairymen’s Association (Madison, WI: David Atwood Co, State Printer, 1880),76.