The Oxford Companion to Cheese, published in November 2016, is packed with delicious information and enticing stories about cheese. In its exploration of the title subject, the volume encompasses history, culture, geography, microbiology and biography. It describes cheeses and cheese shops from around the world.
A sampling of entries, found under the letter “V,” includes Velveeta, Vermont, and Virgil.
Readers are told that Velveeta is a “highly visible processed American cheese product.” They learn about Vermont’s dairy history, and its place today as home to producers of acclaimed cheeses. Readers are treated to Virgil’s description of shepherds making cheese: “What they milk at sunrise and in daylight hours, they press at night.”
The book’s 855 entries were written by 325 authors from 35 countries. As interesting and thorough as the volume is, a strong case could be made for an additional entry in the “D” section, falling between donkey and draining.
That would be Catherine Donnelly, editor of the volume and professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont, her alma mater.
Donnelly was born in 1956 in Portland, Maine, and grew up in that state. She arrived at UVM in 1974 interested in a career in veterinary medicine, but came to understand she couldn’t euthanize dogs and cats.
“I tell my students it’s as important to figure out what you don’t see yourself doing, as what you do,” Donnelly says.
After graduating from UVM in 1978 with a degree in animal science, Donnelly attended graduate school at North Carolina State, where she earned her PhD in food science. She returned to UVM to teach and conduct research, and has been on the faculty since. Donnelly and her husband raised a son and a daughter in Burlington, both of whom are medical students at UVM and graduates of the university.
Donnelly’s particular interest and expertise is food safety; the primary focus of her research is the Listeria bacterium. She began her work on Listeria more than three decades ago, when her return to Burlington coincided with a Listeria outbreak in Boston that killed 14 people. The pathogen was traced to pasteurized milk.
Donnelly’s lab determined the infection occurred in the “processing environment” – or after pasteurization.
“I hit the ground running,” Donnelly says. “People said, ‘You can’t (study) Listeria for the rest of your career.’ And I was like, ‘You wanna bet?’ ”
At the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese, which Donnelly co-directed, her work in food safety intersected with the work of cheesemakers, cheese mongers and other cheese experts.
In the spring of 2013, Donnelly was asked to edit The Oxford Companion to Cheese. She had a sabbatical scheduled, making the timing perfect, but she’d planned on another project. “I just shifted gears,” Donnelly says. “This is such an important book.”
Donnelly’s work on the cheese tome was a wide-ranging editorial endeavor that kept her squarely in front of a computer for about six months. “I have never sat that much in my life,” she says.
She framed the scope of the volume, assembled an editorial board, and committed to making a book that represents the international breadth of cheese – in content and contributors.
“Cheese is so global,” Donnelly says. “What we know about cheese here in the United States is really a short history compared to the rest of the world.”
Donnelly conceived of 900 “head words” — topics the book would address. Scientific and technical terms were easy to determine, Donnelly says, relative to cultural references that would explore and explain cheese in terms of art, history and literature.
She and board members met three times at an inn Donnelly owns in Greensboro, where they projected entries on a screen to discuss length and authorship. They worked to ensure the content of the book would be interesting and meaningful to experts as well as “anybody who eats cheese.” The group cross-referenced entries – a task that was both “tricky and super-fun” – in an effort to make the whole of the book flow together. And, like any vigilant editor, Donnelly nudged authors as deadline approached.
“I see this as an opportunity to really memorialize the history and the culture of cheese,” Donnelly says. “I’d sit there when I’m editing these entries and I’m like, ‘Wow!, that is just so beautiful.’”