Floyd Brewster, age 8, of Gaston, Indiana, for his question:

Who discovered how to make cheese?

Snowy white cottage cheese is good in crunchy salads and soft cream cheese is wonderful in a sandwich. There is good old yellow cheese and dozens of other different cheeses. Dairies have been making them for ages and once in a while someone discovers how to make a new one.
Suppose we lost the recipes for making all our wonderful cheeses. We would miss their tasty flavors in sandwich spreads and salads, sauces and other dishes. Cheeses are tasty and also rich, body building foods. If we lost them, we would have to eat extra helpings of meat to build up our muscles. We would miss our tasty; rich cheeses    but we would not have to do without them for very long. People would discover all over again how to make them.'
Many different people have discovered how to make cheeses. Some of them discovered a recipe by accident. Maybe a bowl of milk was left to curdle and become a mixture of soft, white lumps and watery liquid. The lumps are called curds and if the liquid runs away, the curds may turn into cheese by themselves    or so it seems. Actually, the curds need help to change into cheese. But they do not need people to help them. They need the help of tiny microbes called bacteria.
We do not know when the first cheese was made, or who made it or who tasted the first bite. But it was long, long ago for many people have been making cheeses for thousands of years. Some made it from goat milk and some from camel milk and same from sheep milk. Most of our cheeses, of course, are made from cow milk.
All cheese must be made from some kind of milk. The milk is a mixture of water and teeming scraps of buttery fat, solid proteins and other rich food particles. When it curdles, the floating solids separate from the liquid and bacteria arrive to feed on the solid curds. As they feed, the bacteria change the milk solids. It may take them a long time, but if everything stays cool and quiet, the bacteria can change the soft, loose curds into a solid lump of hard cheese.
Bacteria are too small for our eyes to see, but they are everywhere. They float in the air, teem in the soil and crowd on everything we touch. There are thousands of different kinds and most of them do not harm us. Some of them are cheese makers. Long ago, some of these friendly bacteria chanced to fall into a bowl of sour milk. They got busy and changed the soft curds into cheese. This, most likely, is how our ancestors discovered cheese. The wonderful discovery was made long, long ago and the same discovery was made again and again.
Nobody knew what made the milk change to cheese because bacteria are too small to be seen. But at last the magnifying microscope was invented and the experts could watch the busy bacteria. They found cut which were the cheese makers. They found that each kind makes its own kind of cheese. Nowadays a daily can choose the bacteria it wants and add it to the cheese recipe. One kind makes Cheddar and another makes Edam, one makes Bleu cheese and still another kind makes Swiss cheese full of holes.