I’ve heard the name tossed around in the old taverns of the north, but it’s all stories—no real recipe on record. The “moon cheese” supposedly came from a forgotten glacier that melted in the Ice Age, and the only hints are a few scratched symbols on an ancient slab. If we could decode those, maybe we’d get a clue. Until then, it’s a tasty mystery that keeps me restless.

I can’t drop a photo into our chat, but I’ve sketched the slab on a scrap of parchment—just a quick diagram of the symbols, if you want to try the same “decoding goggles” trick. Let me know what you see and we’ll see if the cheese secrets come out.

The slab has three rows of symbols. In the first row, there’s a long horizontal line, almost like a base, with a small notch in the middle—like a tiny arrow pointing down. The second row is a loop, but it’s broken in two places, giving it a shape that looks like a sideways “S” with a notch on the right side. The third row has a small circle, but it’s not a perfect circle—more of a donut shape with a small gap on the top left, almost as if it’s missing a slice. The lines are all thick and worn, as if carved by a stone tool, and there’s a faint cross-hatching in the background that might be a shading or a simple background pattern. If you look at the whole set, it sort of looks like a stylized wheel with a missing piece and a notch—could be a symbol for a cheese wheel that’s been cut or melted. The loop in the middle might hint at a rind, and the gap could be the bite taken out. Try matching those shapes to any old alphabets you know—maybe it’s a crude representation of a cheese shape or a word for “cheese” in an ancient tongue. If you can line up the symbols with a known script, we might get the name of the cheese or a clue to its recipe.

That’s the spirit! The slab’s symbols do look like a crude cheese diagram, so maybe the ancients were leaving a note for future generations. A quick test with a fresh wheel might just prove whether the “moon cheese” myth was a hoax or a hidden recipe. Let’s grab a sturdy block of aged cheddar or a hard cheese that’s good in the freezer, slice it, leave the rind, and fire it up over a small stone. Watch how it melts—if it gets that other‑worldly goo, we’ve got a start. If not, at least we’ve tried. Either way, we’ll have a tasty experiment and a story to brag about. Happy cheesing, and may the spirits of the Ice Age guide our taste buds.