Cheddar

Cheddar has been made in Somerset for centuries. The village and the gorge gave the cheese a name, and the caves there were useful cool stores. The method mattered more than the caves. Once other dairies learned it, they could make a similar cheese without the gorge. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Somerset cheddar was a model that other British dairies copied.

Emigrants carried the method to North America, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Factories then changed the cheese. A color from annatto became common, especially on cheddar made for export and for American markets. Annatto turns the paste orange. It does not add a flavor. Britain still protects one farmhouse cheese from the old region, under the name West Country Farmhouse Cheddar. A wheel labeled only cheddar has no such protection. The plain name is a method and a style.

The step that gives the cheese its name is cheddaring. After the milk is set and the curd is cut and cooked, the whey is drained and the curd is piled into slabs. The slabs are stacked, turned, and stacked again. Their weight presses out more whey, and the curd knits into a dense, layered mass. It is then milled, salted, and pressed into a wheel or a block.

The next choice splits cheddar into two products. A traditional wheel is bound in cloth and aged in a cool room for many months, sometimes for years. A factory block is sealed so it loses little moisture. Clothbound cheddar dries, sharpens, and often grows small crunchy crystals as it ages. Those crystals are a sign of age. They are not a fault, and they are not salt sprinkled on at the end. Block cheddar stays milder, moister, and more even.

Young cheddar tastes of milk, salt, and a light tang. The texture is flexible and slightly springy. With age the tang becomes sharper, the paste dries, and savory notes come forward: broth, nuts, and sometimes a clean bitterness. A very old clothbound wheel can tingle on the tongue. That bite belongs to the style.

Color is a poor guide. A white cheddar and an orange cheddar can taste the same when annatto is the only difference. Trust the age and the maker more than the color. A clean, sharp smell is what a sound wheel has. A sweaty, ammoniated smell, or a paste that has gone dark and soapy under the cloth, means the wheel was stored badly.

Use a young or medium block when the goal is a smooth melt. That is the cheddar for a cheese sauce, a macaroni and cheese, a toasted sandwich, a rarebit, or a burger. Grate it or slice it thin, and let it melt without frying it in its own fat. A very dry, long-aged wheel is a poor sauce cheese. It melts unevenly. Eat that one in pieces, or grate a little over a finished dish.

On a board, give cheddar something sharp or sweet: an apple, a chutney, a pickled onion, or bread and butter. In Britain it is the cheese of a ploughman's lunch. In the United States it is an everyday cooking cheese, from eggs to casseroles. Match the age to the job. Mild cheddar is for the melt. Old cheddar is for the board and the grater.

Britain still makes the farmhouse cheese, especially in the West Country, and it also makes a great deal of block cheddar. The United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand each turned the method into a national cheese. Those countries do not copy one Somerset wheel. They have their own cheddars, from mild supermarket blocks to clothbound wheels aged on purpose.

Read the label for a place and an age, not only the word cheddar. West Country Farmhouse Cheddar is the protected English cheese, made in the traditional region from a traditional method. A block from Vermont, Ontario, or a factory in England can still be excellent. It is a different purchase. You are buying a style, not a birthplace. When a recipe says cheddar and says nothing more, a young block is the cheese it assumes.