When the Pilgrims voyaged to America in 1620, they made sure that the Mayflower was stocked with cheese. When the colonists settled in the New World they brought with them their own methods of making their favorites kind of cheese. Cheese making in North America and specifically in the United States, remained a farmhouse process throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In 1851, entrepreneur Jesse William had built the first US cheese factory near Rome, Oneida County, New York and introduced production in a grand scale.
After extensive experimentation, Williams regulated the timing as well as the temperature for converting milk to curds, regardless of volume.
In 1867, Robert McAdam introduced the English Cheddar system in a factory near Herkimer, New York. This introduction made Herkimer County famous for its cheese.
For many years during this period, the largest cheese market in world as at Little Falls, New York.
As the population increased in the East and there was a corresponding increase in the demand for market milk, the cheese industry gradually moved westward.
Cheese in United States
