Stinky Cheese Vintage Postcards

Who munched the first bit of bluey gooey Roquefort?

''One story favored by the local authorities is that a shepherd boy was one day loafing in a cool dark cave, about to eat a rustic lunch of bread and cheese, when he saw a shepherdess go by with her flock.

Dropping his lunch, he raced out after her. What with one thing and another, it was several days before he returned. To his amazement he found that the bread was a mass of green mold and his cheese was all streaked and mottled. Wisely he left the bread alone but ate the cheese. Finding it delicious he called in his friends, and soon every cave along the hillside had a cheese in it.

The news of this discovery spread over the trade routes of old Europe. When the Romans built the great highway, the Via Domitia, that linked the Pyrenees with Italy, it passed not far from Roquefort, and it became relatively easy to send the cheeses to the seacoast and then by coastal shipping to Rome. The Romans, it seems, fell in love with Roquefort. Like all the Mediterranean peoples down to our own time they were used to cheeses, most of which tended to be dry and hard. Roquefort, by contrast, was smooth and soft and tasty, and the Roman aristocrats were willing to pay high prices to have it on their tables.

The Emperor Charlemagne, it is said, used to have a packtrain of mules bring Roquefort to his court at Aix-la-Chapelle every Christmas. Rich landed proprietors even received payments in cheese from local peasants!''

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