Courtesy photo

Every now and then, I suffer a sudden attack of nostalgia, and start pining for the hills, castles, and Dark Satanic Mills of good old Blighty. Occasionally, these urges take on a decidedly culinary bent, and I end up craving Scottish kippers, Hovis bread, pickled walnuts and even a bit of decent bacon.

This time, my obsession centered on Cheshire Cheese, a tangy, salty, crumbly commodity common to my own old stomping grounds, the North of England. The stuff is damnably hard to get on this side of the pond, which makes the itch particularly irksome.

But first, a bit of back story. Cheshire Cheese owes its particular flavor and texture to an event in Earth’s dim and distant past. Back in the Triassic period, some 250 million years ago, the whole area was inundated with salt marshes. In time, these evaporated, leaving a huge salt deposit just under the ground.

When the Romans invaded the country in 55 BCE, production of this cheese was already at full throttle, and the newcomers were keen on getting as much of it for themselves as they could, even founding the walled city of Chester, where they could control its manufacture. They initially inquired of a local cheesemaker the secret of the process, but he wouldn’t give it up, so they promptly put him to death. After that, the other locals were a bit more cooperative.

Even after the Romans departed in the fifth century, the cheese production continued, and the taste for it grew apace. In 1586, William Camden sang its praises in his book, “Britannia,” as follows: “…the grasse and fodder there is of that goodness and vertue that the cheeses bee made heer in great number of a most pleasing and delicate taste, such as all England againe affordeth not the like, no, though the best dairy women otherwise and skillfullness in cheesemaking be had from hence.” Even the French, noted for their disdain for all things English, hopped on board, composing a rhyme as to its virtues: “dans le chester sec et rose, a longues dents de l’anglais mordent. (Into the Cheshire cheese, dry and pink, The long teeth of the English sink.)”

Cheshire Cheese has its own particular process, involving leaving the milk from the evening milking to stand overnight, and then mixed with the morning’s milking. A starter culture is then introduced, after which the curds are extracted and torn into small pieces. They are then passed through a mill and pressed into molds for two days. The cheese is then matured for between four and eight weeks. The longer it sits, the better it gets.

There are four varieties of Cheshire Cheese: white, extra-mature, red and blue. The red cheese is colored with annatto, while the blue version is punctured during ripening, creating blue veins.

Even Queen Elizabeth I was enamored with this cheese, declaring it to be the best in all her realm. A good 150 years after her death, the Royal navy ordered that all the ships should be stocked with it. By 1823, the production was up to 10,000 tons a year.

When Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated in 1800, his good friend, John Leland, took note. He had recently relocated to Cheshire, and decided to send him a cheese wheel in congratulations. Utilizing the milk of over 900 cows, the resulting snack weighed in at a massive 1,235 pounds. It was then shipped across the Atlantic, and thence to the Hudson River, where it traveled by barge through Chesapeake Bay, and then to Baltimore. From there, it was shipped by horse and wagon to Washington D.C. There, it occupied a room in the White House, where it just sat for the next four years or so. After that, it got to be a bit much, and was disposed of.

Alas, Cheshire Cheese no longer holds the high regard it once did, many other interlopers having invaded the market. In 1960, Britain produced around 40,000 tons a year. Today, that has been whittled down to 6,000 tons, the product of only five manufacturers.

Usually, I put a recipe down here, but that doesn’t seem appropriate in this case. Cheshire Cheese is best eaten cold, with some good butter and table water crackers, and perhaps some pickled onions or walnuts as an accompaniment. The real problem is finding it. I could only find one outlet, a particular supermarket chain beginning with the letter “S.” I’m pretty sure you can figure out which one it is.

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