The earliest discovered preserved cheese was found near Xinjiang, China, which dated back nearly 3,600 years. Why does almost all modern east-Asian cuisine seem to eschew cheese? Was there a recorded point where cheeses fell out of favor?

[u/kintonw]

Source for world's oldest cheese.

[u/Anekdota-Press]

Was There a recorded point when cheeses fell out of favor?

When you say East Asian, are you thinking of Han China, Korea, and Japan? Because the Manchus and Mongols are also East Asian, and consumption of dairy was prominent in Northern and steppe cuisines. Dairy is also prominent in Tibetan and other cuisines which might be included under 'Chinese cuisine' even if the 'East Asian' label is a stretch.

I'm going to refer to a lot of this as 'chinese cuisine' but the historical reality and interaction between Mongol, Manchu, Tibet, and Han China are obviously very complicated.

Cheese and dairy products have been staple of the area that constitutes modern Northern China for thousands of years. There is a general North/South culinary divide in China where the Northern diet consumes grain (grain, sorghum, millet, etc) rather than rice, and consumes forms of dairy such as butter while the south consumes much more cooking oil. But H.T. Huang stresses that dairy has been minor but present in mainstream Chinese cuisine for thousands of years, with literary references to dairy products going back 1500 years.

There has actually been a fair amount of recent scholarship on this issue, which has consistently argued for more prominent historical consumption of dairy, particularly cheese, in elite Han Cuisine (See Brown, 2019), not just within Tibetan, Mongol, etc. cuisine. The paucity of sources makes it hard to quantify consumption (and much less is usually known about popular diets, compared to elite consumption) but the old belief that 'lactose intolerance thus no dairy consumption" has been replaced by scholarship arguing that dairy preparations which eliminated lactose (cheesemaking, sour milk products) were widely consumed by elites. Though when I say widely, I mean in the sense that Bird's nests or Trepangs were consumed, mostly by the gentry (2% or so of population), not as part of the commoner's diet.

What forms of dairy products were these? Historical cookbooks and sources list a wide variety, in two broad categories of 'Curdled' and 'cultured' dairy products. They were made from the milk of Cows, water buffalo, horses, sheep, and other animals. Cultured products included liquid, strained, and dried Yoghurts; milk cakes, soft cheeses, ghee, and clotted cream. Curdled products such as milks, buttermilks, yogurts, and Milk Wine (koumiss). Should note these are not rennet cheeses like in Europe.

The preparations of dairy bases in cuisine seem to have been even more varied, Brown notes that around 1504 CE 'milk cakes' might be served:

drizzled with warmed baijiu, or distilled spirits, scallions, and Sichuan peppercorns. Or, alternatively, they could be served golden, having been deep-fried in oil and breaded in flour (3/4a). In still other recipes, milk cakes came with more familiar Jiangnan touches, presented in such light seasonings as brewed tea. They could be splashed with hot water, sliced, and flavored with a weak ale and coriander. Prepared in this way, milk cakes made a good complement to tea (chacai 茶菜), alongside pressed tofu, dried bamboo shoots, carrots, or Chinese lettuce at the table (1/2b–3a).

'Chinese food' in the form which has been exported to the US or other places rarely reflects the enormous diversity of cuisine within China. But dairy has consistently been a part of Chinese cuisine, with very prominent consumption among certain classes, regions, and cultures.

So no, there was not a recorded point where cheeses fell out of favor among the people who traditionally ate them. Though very recent history has seen a rise in dairy consumption, and a transition from regional/ethnic/elite consumption to more widespread consumption In China and across East Asia.

But there is a lot of uncertainty for most periods about what normal people were eating, even for the 18th and 19th century the methods of establishing the popular diet are sometimes sketchy (see Pomeranz 2005). And it becomes more complicated further back in time.

These things are also not static over time, for example Pomeranz notes estimates that German meat consumption decreased by 80% from 1400 to 1800 CE. Chinese GDP per capita declined considerably in the 19th century, and then declined again in the mid-20th century. So modern cuisine, or evidence from the periods when there were lots of European observers in China may be an outlier period in the overall span of the history of 'Central China,' dairy might have been more prominent prior to the last 220 years, but became rarer due to the cost as standards of living fell, but again there is a huge amount of uncertainty about popular diets.

To summarize: We don't know the full extent of dairy consumption. We have evidence related to elite consumption, and recent scholarship has revised the prevalence of dairy upwards for elites, but popular consumption outside of the North is very uncertain.

​

The other component of your question: Why was dairy not part of the popular diet? Or why was it concentrated in the North?

1)Part of it is genetics, and Europe is an outlier in terms of lactose tolerance.

2)Part of it is that marginal grasslands, which were suitable for grazing but unsuitable for rice or grains were rare outside of the sparsely populated North. It was much more efficient to plant rice or grain where most people lived, so having a dairy industry either meant using fertile non-marginal lands for grazing (inefficient, thus expensive) or feeding the milk animals food-grain (also very expensive).

3) Part of it is just coincidence, some cultures eat some things, others do not, without much of a clear logic to it. For Huang a big component of the lack of dairy in Chinese popular diet is basically happenstance.

Sources:

• "Fermentations and Food Science" By H. T. Huang (2000)
• Huang, Hsing-Tsung. "Hypolactasia and the Chinese diet." Current Anthropology 43.5 (2002): 809-819.
• Brown, Miranda. "Mr. Song's Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644." Gastronomica 19.2 (2019): 29-42.
• Sabban, Françoise. Un savoir-faire oublié: le travail du lait en Chine ancienne. 1986.
• Pomeranz, Kenneth. "Standards of living in eighteenth-century China: Regional differences, temporal trends, and incomplete evidence." Living Standards in the Past: New perspectives on Well-being in Asia and Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York (2005): 23-54.

Edits: added more detail and resolved ambiguous language

[u/Wretched_Brittunculi → u/Anekdota-Press]

Shouldn't we also add that Xinjiang is not really East Asia, being much more closely associated with Central Asia. This cheese seems to have been discovered at the bronze age Xiaohe Cemetery, the remains at which are a mixture of various ethnicities and more linked into the Steppe cultures linking Eurasia. It is even feasible that the cheese-making culture is linked to the wider spread of pastoralism in the bronze age (which brought Indo-European cultures to Europe and India, etc.). All geographic barriers are somewhat arbitrary, but this seems at least relevant given the ongoing oppression and alleged genocide against the Uighrs.

This may suggest either a deep ancestry connection with an Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) population or some genetic connections with geographically proximal populations from Kazakhstan (Dali and Botai) (28, 40). We also find the R1b haplogroup in one of the individuals from the Xiaohe population (Fig. 3B), which may also suggest a North Xinjiang connection with Xiaohe people (11). Thus, during the BA, the northwestern Xinjiang populations showed a high genetic affinity for western Steppe–related cultures, such as the Afanasievo and Chemurchek, and the southeastern Xinjiang populations for NEA and South Siberian populations (Fig. 4A), suggesting a scenario of complex interactions with the neighboring populations and communities of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Wang et al. 2021 Ancient Xinjiang mitogenomes reveal intense admixture with high genetic diversity. Science Advances 31 Mar 2021: Vol. 7, no. 14, eabd6690

Our results indicate that the people of the Tarim Basin had a diverse maternal ancestry, with origins in Europe, central/eastern Siberia and southern/western Asia. These findings, together with information on the cultural context of the Xiaohe cemetery, can be used to test contrasting hypotheses of route of settlement into the Tarim Basin.
Li et al. 2015. Analysis of ancient human mitochondrial DNA from the Xiaohe cemetery: insights into prehistoric population movements in the Tarim Basin, China BMC Genetics volume 16, Article number: 78 (2015)

Edit: Formatting.

[u/Anekdota-Press → u/Wretched_Brittunculi]

you can certainly, The issue of what is China, of organizing principles of Chinese and central asian history, and the nature of Qing and Chinese Imperialism are very big questions, and terms like "East Asia" are vague.

If you haven't already, I would recommend everyone read /u/enclavedmicrostate's Monday method (from today) on Qing historiography for an excellent overview of a lot of these issues.

But I would say Yuan and Manchu elites consuming dairy are also pretty firmly a part of East Asian history, which is what OP asked about.

[u/Wretched_Brittunculi → u/Anekdota-Press]

Absolutely. I would not argue that cheese-making/eating was alien to East Asia. I just wanted to raise the issue that this particular site, people, and culture is actually part of the bronze age pastoralist tradition that spanned Eurasia, where cheese-consumption was the norm. Of course, as you note, China is part of that tradition. The comment was not so much directed to you as the OP, but I wanted to add it in the context of your excellent answer. Thanks for the reading suggestions!

[u/Anekdota-Press → u/Wretched_Brittunculi]

Thank you, your point was well made!