Cheshire

What is Cheshire Cheese?

Cheshire cheese is made in the English county of Cheshire and in the neighbouring counties of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Denbighshire and Flintshire. It is one of the oldest recorded named cheeses in British history. The first mention comes from the naturalist and physician Thomas Muffet, who wrote about it alongside a Shropshire cheese in Health's Improvement around 1580. The claim that it appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 is a myth.

By the late 18th century it was the most popular cheese on the market. The Royal Navy ordered in 1758 that ships be stocked with Cheshire and Gloucester. Production was put at roughly 10,000 tonnes a year in 1823 and around 12,000 tons a year by about 1870.

Until the late 19th century the cheese was aged hard enough to survive the trip to London by horse and cart, and later by boat. Then a younger, fresher, crumbly style took hold, first in the industrial North and Midlands. It needed less storage, so it cost less to make. Sales peaked near 40,000 tonnes in 1960 and fell as the range of British cheeses widened. Today they sit at about 6,000 tonnes a year, and Nantwich hosted the International Cheese Awards until 2021.

The cheese is dense and semi-hard, with a moist, crumbly texture and a mild, salty taste. Factory versions run drier and break up less, closer to a mild Cheddar, which makes them easier to handle.

Plain white accounts for most of what is made. Red Cheshire is coloured with annatto to a deep orange; it started in the hills of North Wales and was sold to travellers on the road to Holyhead, and that trade worked so well that Cheshire producers began dyeing their own cheese to match what buyers expected. Blue Cheshire carries veins like Stilton or Shropshire Blue, though it is less creamy than Stilton and is left uncoloured. London clubs favoured it from the Georgian period onward. Production stopped in the late 1980s and several English makers have since brought it back.