2005年NPR美国国家公共电台九月-Cheese-Making Tradition Melts Away in Cam

(France is known for its hundreds of) cheeses. The most famous is perhaps the soft round Camembert, now enjoyed all over the world, but to be considered a real Camembert, the cheese must be made in Normandy, in northwestern France from the milk of Norman cows. In the village of Camembert, there is only one man left making cheese in a traditional way. Eleanor Beardsley reports.

The tiny village of Camembert lies in the heart of Normandy, nestled among patchwork 1 fields dotted with grazing cows. Aside from the satellite dishes that now crowns some of the thatched roof houses ,not much seems to have changed here in the past two hundred years except name recognition of course. The name Camembert is now famous the world over. The last cheese maker 2 in the village Francois Durand still makes his Camembert by hand.

'My name is Francois Durand. I am 44 years old and I make farm-style Camembert cheese in Camembert. And I am also the last maker of farm-style Appalachian-controlled Camembert cheese in France.'

Farm-style means that Durand uses the milk from his own cows to make about 120,000 Camembert a year. This morning he is just beginning a fresh batch 3. After heating vats 4 of freshly drawn 5 milk to 90 degrees, he mixes / in a small dose of the enzyme 6 rennin which is extracted from the stomachs of calves 7. The enzyme called pizura in France curdles 8 the vats of milk which Durand then cuts and ladles into dozens of Camembert moulds lined up on straw mats. Most large industrial Camembert makers 9 use a mechanized process and many pasteurized their milk. But in the tradition of the best cheese makers, Durand works with unpasteurized or raw milk.

‘There is a huge difference in taste between a pasteurized cheese and a raw milk cheese. By using raw milk, we keep all the natural fermentations. When you pasteurize or heat the milk to 167 degrees, you kill the fermentations in the milk and you have to use synthetic 10 ones, that are not as good.’

Durand claims cheese made from raw milk has distinct advantages for the human body.

Someone who only eats pasteurized products, the day he comes across a pathogen like wisteria, will be a lot more vulnerable than someone who has eaten raw milk / products all his life because the body gradually immunizes itself.

After the curdled 11 milk is ladled into the moulds layer by layer, it is left for 24 hours. By then, the liquid has drained off and the cheese has become more dense 12. When the moulds are removed, the round cheeses are salted but they are not Camembert yet. For the transformation 13 to take place, the cheese must spend at least two more weeks in a cool dark room for the process of affinage. During this time, a layer of fuzzy white mould develops on the cheese giving it the distinctive 14 Camembert odor and taste.

Just down the hill from the church in Camembert stands a memorial to Marie Harel. She is credited with inventing the cheese in 1789. Mayor’s office in a small Camembert museum next door / both closed. But 80-year-old, Camembert native Pierre Blais is outside in his garden. He points to a wooden-beamed house on a hill where he saysMarie Harel used to live.

‘She hid a priest there in that house upon the hill, because you know, during the French Revolution priests were meant to disappear. Well he was hidden for quite a while up there in that house. And during that time, he gave her the secret to making Camembert.’

From time to time, the story has been contested but no one has yet found a better version. Back at the farm, newly made Camembert is being wrapped in wax paper and put into little, round wooden boxes. Durand says what he loves most about his craft is that he controls the process from beginning to end. But that’s also what makes it challenging.

‘The evolution of the cheese depends on outside conditions that you can not always control. And when you are working with the living, fragile product like raw milk, the challenge and difficulty is to always keep the same quality.’

Durand says his children are not interested in cheese-making and he is not sure he’ll be able to find someone to take over the business. If he fails, the village of Camembert may no longer have its own cheese maker.

For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley .