A cheesy ending

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Time Team was brought to Stilton as a result of the discovery of a Roman cheese press. So what better reconstruction cameo to attempt than a spot of Roman cheese making? Even if the excavations didn't find any further evidence of cheese making or cheese makers here, it still provided the opportunity for a cheesy ending as the Team enjoyed a spot of Roman cheese-tasting at the end of the third day.

Time Tarts
For this cameo, Time Team called in Karen and John Naylor from Time Tarts, who specialise in reconstructing aspects of the past for museums and television. John is skilled in replicating objects and period technology, while Karen focuses on textiles, costume and food.

Here's how they did it
'The main material to source was milk,' says John. 'Some research found us the prize-winning herd of goats in Nottinghamshire.' This was at Skylark Hill Goats, a small goat farm with its own cheese-making dairy.

Okay, it's not Stilton but it's still in the modern Stilton cheese-making area. We spent some time with the farmer, who also makes goats cheese, and finally sourced our unpasteurised milk straight from the goats.

Note that Roman writings clearly indicate they thought the milk from animals with two teats – goats and sheep – was far superior for cheese making than the milk from animals with four teats – cows.

Was the equipment used historically accurate?
Everything we used was a reconstruction of a well provenanced Roman object. We even heated the milk over charcoal on a replica of a cooker found at Pompeii. Of course, we had the replica of the cheese press that sparked this particular Time Team dig.

What were the steps in the reconstruction?
The Romans would probably have made their cheese with the milk still warm, straight from the goats – and this gives a better yield. We didn't have the luxury of goats on location so we had to warm the milk over the cooker. Once at blood heat we added red wine vinegar and as Tony stirred the pan it immediately began to curdle, creating the curds we wanted.

Once curdled, we strained the curds from the whey through a fine cloth in the cheese press. The curds form the cheese and it's simply a case of letting them drain and compressing them by stacking presses on top of each other (hence their shape). You can add herbs, salt etc at this stage.

What was the hardest part of the reconstruction?
This is something we have done before and in several contexts, including extended living history/experimental archaeology. The process is relatively easy and you can even try it at home. It is, of course, a little nerve wracking to make sure everything works perfectly, first time, in front of the cameras, and Time Team's schedule doesn't allow time for the cheese to fully mature. Still, the crew seemed to really enjoy it, especially served with olive relish on bread baked on our Pompeii cooker alongside the trench at the end of the dig.

Would you change anything if you did it again?
Doing it again, it would be great to have more presses and try and do a larger amount of cheese just as the Roman's would have done.

What is your next challenge after doing a reconstruction for Time Team?
Our work is always varied and interesting – currently we are working on 11th-century fireproof clothing based on the St Petersburg manuscript for another TV programme. Experimental archaeology and reconstructing the past is always challenging and interesting and we never know just what might be around the corner.

The Time Tarts website is at www.timetarts.co.uk

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