Regardless of numerous marketing tricks which try to sell us high quality Parmesan cheese, the only hard cheese that can legally be called Parmesan, as ruled by the European Court in 2008, is the real Parmigiano Reggiano, produced in the Parma region of Italy.
Its history dates back nearly 900 years, when is believed the production of the hard cheese started in Benedictine monasteries in the province of Reggio Emilia, with the first written record going back to a notary deed, drawn up in Genoa in 1254.
Obviously, by the mid 13th century the Benedectine abbeys made it quite far in exporting the cheese throughout Italy and the next century saw Boccaccio dreaming of a huge delightful pile of grated Parmesan over macaroni and ravioli, when describing an imaginary gourmet paradise, called Bengod, in his Decameron of 1348.
And while the Genoa historic record serves as an international export attempt, the real Parmigiano expansion through Europe started in only the mid 15th century, when the cheese was crowned by some of the best chefs of the day in Germany and France and when Moliere, himself, is said to had eaten nothing else, but Parmesan in the final years of his life.
The name Parmesan found its establishment in the French Court, at the start of the 16th century, when the French nobility acquired a taste for the Parma cheese and the fromaige de parmisan (cheese from Parma) got shortened to parmisan or parmesan.
In 1511 the Pope made a gift of diplomacy to Henry VIII of one hundred Parma cheeses, and the first use of the word in English print came 8 years later, from William Horman’s Vulgaria where he writes: “We shall eat parmesan cheese”.
Naturally, in the following centuries, the Italian exported Parma cheese, considered a delicacy among the noble and wealthy classes, had a very price in Britain. A famously known case is those of the Britain’s most celebrated diarists, Samuel Pepys, who buried his wines and parmesan cheese during the Great Fire of London of 1666.
Nowadays, the Parma cheese keeps its high value and finds place in bank vaults, with data that around Italy over 300 000 wheels of parmesan cheese, worth nearly $200 million, are kept at bank safes.
To end with the words of one of the founding fathers and original food lovers of America, Benjamin Franklin, who on July 9, 1769 in a letter to John Bartram, wrote the following: “And for one I confess that if I could find in any Italian Travels a Receipt for making Parmesan Cheese, it would give me more Satisfaction than a Transcript of any Inscription from any Stone whatever.”
