Cheddar cheese - posh to everyday
By posh to everyday I mean the two examples above. On the left is Keen's cheddar from Somerset - one of only three makers to be awarded:
"The term Somerset Artisan Cheddar, which is a recognised Slow Food Praesidium is only given to producers that meet more exacting requirements still - making traditional cloth-bound cheeses from unpasteurised milk, with traditional starter cultures and animal rennet. Only three producers Keen, Montgomery and Westcombe meet these criteria." Fiona Beckett/Matching Food and Wine
On the right above an anonymous packet of processed Cheddar slices. The kind of thing you will find in any supermarket or on your cheese hamburger in MacDonald's. Mind you, you can go even lower and have just 'processed cheese' which could be anything - maybe not even cheese - or hardly any anyway.
There is a slightly less restrictive PDO registration called West Country Farmhouse Cheddar which:
"may only be produced in Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall, using milk sourced from those counties." and also: "The cheese must never be made in block form and must be matured in cloth for at least a year."
This is just one example and you will see that it is rather more orange than the Keens one. But colour is not a criteria and colour can be added. Some may also have a touch of mould within.
Cheddar indeed can be many things and its fame has spread throughout the world - indeed it is said to be the most bought cheese in the world. In America it's pipped to the post by Mozzarella. Which maybe is why I have the feeling that generally food snobs look down on Cheddar - well British cheese in general. When something is successful it tends to become 'common' and therefore not desirable.
And yet having just had a lunch of bread and cheese - Mainland vintage cheddar and English Red Leicester I can say that for me there really isn't anything better in the way of cheese. It is so ubiquitous here in Australia however, that we often don't even give it the name of Cheddar but just call it Tasty or Mild or Vintage cheese. Cheese is a synonym for Cheddar. Or is it the other way around?
I'm actually writing about this because the night before last we were talking about cheese-making having just consumed the second half of my Italian spinach pie, and David asked me if I knew how they made Cheddar and I had to say no. I knew that there was a process called Cheddaring but I didn't know what it was. So today I investigated.
I'm not going to describe the process in detail - go to Fiona Beckett's article on the Matching Food and Wine website - So what makes a great Cheddar? or - watch this video - Cheddaring video/The Word on Cheese Culture/YouTube to actually see what they do. It's very short - and possibly it's in America, but America actually makes some good cheddar - in Vermont and Wisconsin - mostly - as does Scotland - well the English speaking world really. It's also possibly a slightly more industrialised process in the video than at Keen's artisan farm
The basics after the more common process of separating the curds from the whey is to slice the curds into blocks and stack them on top of each other to press out even more whey. The process is repeated several times. One of those artisan producers has a machine they call Tina the Turner to do this. When they are dry enough they are shredded or cut into small pieces, salted, and placed in moulds, coated with lard and wrapped in muslin before putting into storage - for up to 18 months.
So a tiny bit of history. Cheddar cheese was first recorded back in the 12th century. It was made in the villages around Cheddar Gorge and Wookey Hole in Somerset -originally it was supposed to be no further away than 30-40 km from Wells Cathedral, where there were caves in which the cheese could be stored to mature. The caves provided a steady degree of temperature and humidity - and those aforementioned artisans still use those caves - the one above is in Wookey Hole.
Then in the 19th century Joseph Harding found a way to industrialise the process and in fact standardised the cheddaring process. I'm guessing it has been much further industrialised since then.
Processed cheese was invented in Switzerland in 1911 by Walter Gerbler and Fritz Stettler. Processed cheese is:
"a product made from cheese mixed with an emulsifying agent (actually a calcium chelator). Additional ingredients, such as unfermented dairy ingredients, salt, vegetable oils, sugar, or food coloring may be included." Wikipedia
And it probably deserves a post to itself.
Suffice to say of Cheddar - according to Delia Smith that is:
"A good Cheddar cheese should look amber yellow and fresh, without a greasy shine and it should feel firm but not hard. Its clean and mellow flavour makes it very suitable for cooking, toasting, topping, for cheese sauces or simply for serving with pickled onions and beer for a ploughman’s lunch."
Then there's Club cheddar - which according to the Maffra cheese company whose club cheddar is shown here - is:
"Made by mixing and blending a variety of cheeses and natural flavours to achieve a smooth, buttery texture made by milling one or more cheddars and forming them back into a block under pressure. Club cheddars have a smooth, creamy texture, very different from that of traditional cheddar, and some have flavours (such as onion or pepper) added to them."
This one, like many other cheddars today is coated in wax.
Clun Cheddars are indeed pretty tasty, but I would call them crumbly rather than smooth.
A quick look at an old (2021) Choice rating of supermarket Cheddar cheese in Australia had King Island Surprise Bay as top of the heap, however Idon't think KIng Island is still producing but the rest were from Thomas Dux - Woolworth's posh home brand and Coles Australian Vintage. I suspect there are more options available these days, and besides it's really a matter of personal taste, but I will approve of the Thomas Dux and the Coles Vintage. The Mainland Vintage I had today was pretty good though, even if it does come from New Zealand.
There are so many things you can do with Cheddar cheese because you can cook with it as well as just eat it. And the classic is Welsh rarebit - well really it's rabbit:
“Yes, rabbit, not rarebit, as Welsh rabbit turned up in print in 1725 and rarebit 60 years later (perhaps to smarten it up a bit). In 1747, Hannah Glasse had recipes for rabbits for Scotland, Wales and England. The first was just toasted cheese on toast and butter, Welsh rabbit had mustard added, and English rabbit had red wine soaked into the toast" Nigel Slater/Country Life/Lavender and Lovage
Why Welsh? And why rabbit - its earlier name? Well there's this entirely fanciful story that Felicity Cloake recounts in her introduction to her Perfect Welsh rarebit
"according to a 16th-century joke, the Welsh were famous for their love of toasted cheese – St Peter was said to have got rid of a troublesome "company of Welchman" who were troubling the peace of heaven by going outside and shouting caws pobi – "that is as moche as to say 'Rosty'd ches!' Which thynge the Welchman herying ran out of heven a grete pace".
But she also tells us that there is the more likely version:
"The point was that a Welshman couldn't afford even that cheapest of meats"
Welsh rarebit or rabbit, might well be the perfect way to cook Cheddar cheese however, even if some people use other cheeses, because:
"if heaven isn't toasted cheese, then I don't know what is." Felicity Cloake
The second version shown here is Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Perfect Welsh rarebit/BBC Food and they are both pretty traditional about it - make a roux with butter and flour, mix with a mixture of grated cheese, a touch of beer, Worcestershire sauce and mustard and cook under the grill until bubbling.
Yum. There will be cheddar in the scones I shall make shortly to go with a corn chowder that includes my leftover whey. And there's always cheddar in the fridge.
YEARS GONE BY
October 22
2025 - Nothing
2023 - Chowder - now there's a coincidence
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2016 - Nothing
Really interesting and the video is definitely worth watching. Hmm cheese will not be the same again. Looking forward to these scones tonight! 🤪