The ‘art’ and ‘science’ of handcrafting cheese in the United States

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the United States, this article demonstrates how American cheesemakers articulate the work of handcrafting cheese as a balance of ‘art’ and ‘science’, where art refers to aesthetic creativity and an intuitive ability to interpret observable conditions as a guide for contingent practice, while science refers to the accurate measuring of those conditions as well as meticulous record-keeping and hygiene. Artisanship thus entails a blend of subjective and objective practice and accounting, characterized here as the application of synaesthetic reason. Mutually defining, art and science in the crafting of cheese are far from mutually exclusive. And both are embedded in larger cultural contexts. Artisanship must also acknowledge market-based tastes and cultural understandings of acceptable form.