'I've never seen anything like it' - The oldest book about cheese (and its odd advice)

A new transcription, made by Tudor re-enactors at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, is now available to read online alongside the digital version of the original handwritten manuscript.

A pamflyt compiled of Cheese, contayninge the differences, nature, qualities, and goodnes, of the same was unpublished and unknown until it surfaced at auction in 2023 and was acquired by the University of Leeds with the support of a grant from Friends of the Nation’s Libraries.

The 112-page vellum- bound manuscript is thought to date from the 1580s.

Food historian Peter Brears said: “Over the last 50 years we’ve seen a great revival of English cheeses of every variety. The ‘Pamflyt’ really shows us that we have a cheese heritage in this country.

“I’ve never seen anything like it: it’s probably the first comprehensive academic study of a single foodstuff to be written in the English language.

"Although cheese has formed part of our diets since prehistoric times, there was still little evidence of its character and places of production by the Tudor era.

"The Pamflyt shows that cheeses of different kinds were being considered, and also studied from a dietary point of view.”

Readings from the new transcription can be heard for the first time on the latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme.

Presenter Sheila Dillon also visits a modern-day cheesemaker in Yorkshire to bring one of the Tudor recipes back to life.

“What first struck me was that it was written in an incredibly neat hand”, says Dr Alex Bamji, Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds. “It’s a substantial piece of work: ‘Treatise’ might be a better word to describe it.”