Lancashire

What is Lancashire Cheese?

Lancashire is a cow's milk cheese from the county of Lancashire in England. For centuries, dairy farmers' wives made it from surplus milk. A small farm could not fill a cheese with one day's milk, so each day's milk was curdled and the curd saved until there was enough.

That habit became the method. Two or three days' curd, each at a different stage of maturity, are blended into one cheese, which no other British cheese does. Joseph Gornall, a county council employee from Garstang and Pilling, visited farms in the 1890s and set down a standard recipe still used today. His Gornall Patent Cheesemaker was sold between 1892 and 1919.

There are three versions. Creamy Lancashire matures four to twelve weeks and has a fluffy texture and creamy flavour. Tasty Lancashire comes from the same process but sits from 12 weeks to 24 months and turns nutty. Crumbly Lancashire, created in the 1950s, uses a single day's milk and matures only six to eight weeks, which leaves it crumbly, fresh and high in acid, closer to Cheshire or Wensleydale. It is the only Lancashire made outside the county.

Creamy Lancashire suits toasting because it does not turn stringy when melted. The cheese is traditionally eaten with Eccles cakes and Chorley cakes. Beacon Fell Traditional Lancashire Cheese is a protected name, restricted to cheese made by a designated method from milk produced north of the River Ribble, including the Fylde, Preston and Blackpool. Leigh cheese, another version of Lancashire, stopped being made in the 19th century.