Cheddar Cheese
Britain's favourite cheese gets its name from a Somerset village, and its first big customer may have been a king who bought more than ten thousand pounds of it in one go.
Published
Quick Facts
- Named after
- Cheddar, a village in Somerset
- Earliest record
- Henry II's purchase of 10,240 lb of cheese from Cheddar, recorded in 1170
- Defining technique
- Cheddaring: stacking and turning slabs of curd to drain the whey
- Milk
- Cow's milk, traditionally from the West Country
- Protected name
- West Country Farmhouse Cheddar (PDO), matured for at least nine months
- Father of modern Cheddar
- Joseph Harding, Somerset dairyman (1805–1876)
- Classic ageing spot
- The caves of Cheddar Gorge, with their cool, steady temperature
- Place in Britain
- The biggest-selling cheese in the country
The king who bought a mountain of cheese
The oldest famous mention of Cheddar cheese is a royal shopping list. The Pipe Rolls of 1170 record Henry II buying 10,240 lb of cheese from Cheddar, at a farthing a pound. That is a lot of cheese from a single Somerset village, and it suggests the place already had a reputation for it. The village sits at the foot of Cheddar Gorge, and the gorge helps explain the cheese. Its caves stay cool all year round, which suits slow maturing. Cheese is still stored in them today. The same cave system gave us Cheddar Man, a skeleton about 10,000 years old, found in Gough's Cave in 1903.
Cheddaring: the stacking trick that defines the cheese
Cheddar is made by warming milk, adding starter culture and rennet, and cutting the set curd so the whey runs out. Then comes the step that gives the cheese its character. The curd is piled into slabs, which are stacked and turned again and again. This is cheddaring, a process named after the cheese and the village. The slabs squeeze out more whey and the curd becomes more acidic, firm and almost fibrous. It is then milled into small pieces, salted, pressed into moulds and left to mature. The result is a dense, sliceable cheese that keeps well and gets better with age. A mature Cheddar often has tiny crunchy crystals in it. These are a sign of long ageing, not of anything going wrong.
Joseph Harding, the man who wrote the rules
Cheddar-making was once a farmhouse craft, and every dairy did it slightly differently. Joseph Harding, a Somerset dairyman born in 1805, set out to standardise it. He tightened up the method, introduced better equipment and hygiene, and taught others, earning the nickname "the father of Cheddar". His family carried the method far beyond Somerset, and his sons took it to other countries. That is one reason Cheddar is now made across the world, from North America to Australia and New Zealand.
Is it Cheddar if it's not from Cheddar?
Here is the great argument. The name "Cheddar" on its own is not protected, so anyone, anywhere, can make a cheese and call it Cheddar. Two versions do have protection: West Country Farmhouse Cheddar has PDO status, and Orkney Scottish Island Cheddar has PGI status. The West Country cheese must be made in Somerset, Dorset, Devon or Cornwall, using local cow's milk and traditional methods, and it must be matured for at least nine months. So a block of factory Cheddar from Cornwall, a cloth-bound truckle from a Somerset farm and a mild orange slab from a different continent can all legitimately use the name. Orange or white is the other perennial row. Cheddar's natural colour is pale ivory. The orange comes from annatto, a plant dye, and it is purely a matter of looks and tradition.
The war that nearly killed farmhouse Cheddar
During the Second World War, rationing and government control of milk meant that one national cheese was made in huge quantities. This was a standardised "Government Cheddar", and it pushed out nearly everything else. Farmhouse cheesemaking across Britain collapsed, and traditional Cheddar makers dwindled to a handful. It took decades of stubborn craftsmanship to revive the cloth-bound, slowly matured cheeses that fans now seek out. Makers such as Keen's, Montgomery's and Westcombe helped bring them back. There are regional cousins too, including the Scottish Isle of Mull Cheddar and the crumbly, tangy cheeses of Cornwall and Devon.
How Britain eats it
Cheddar is the cheese on the ploughman's, the cheese on toast, and the melting heart of a Welsh rarebit. It goes into cauliflower cheese, macaroni cheese and the humble cheese sandwich, usually with pickle. Mild Cheddar suits sandwiches. A vintage truckle, sharp and nutty with a long finish, is better on a board with an apple, a chutney and some oatcakes. Store it somewhere cool, wrapped in paper or wax paper rather than cling film, and let it come up to room temperature before you eat it.
Notable people
- Joseph Harding
- Henry II
Keep exploring
The Sunday Roast
Published
The French nicknamed the English 'les rosbifs' for it, and a chemistry society once ruled on exactly how tall a Yorkshire pudding should be. Meet the Sunday roast.
.jpg){kind=link}
Irn-Bru
Published
Scotland's fluorescent orange fizz was born as 'Iron Brew' in 1901, lost its spelling to post-war food rules, and is still made to a recipe known to very few people.
Haggis
Published
Scotland's national dish is a sheep's stomach stuffed with its own offal, oats and spice, and it gets a poem, a supper and a ban on US shelves.