Cheddar Cheese |
| Production Area | Worldwide |
| Origin | England |
| Milk | Cow milk |
| Pasteurized | Frequently |
| Texture | Hard/Semi-hard |
| Fat content | 33% (typical) |
| Protein content | 25% (typical) |
| Aging time | 3 months - 4+ years |
Cheddar cheese is a pale-yellow, sharp tasting type of cheese originally made in the English town of Cheddar, in Somerset. Cheddar-style cheeses are produced in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Much of this cheese is however mass-produced and the quality varies enormously.
Cheddar has perhaps always been the most popular cheese in England. A pipe roll of King Henry II records the purchase of 10,420 pounds (avoirdupois pounds and troy pounds did not exist then, probably tower pounds or about 3650 kg) at a farthing per pound (£3 per tonne).
Cheddaring refers to an additional step in the production of cheddar-style cheese where the curd is cut into cubes to drain the whey, stacked, and turned.
Cheddar cheese is today far too ubiquitous to have a 'protected designated origin'. However, recently the European Union recognised 'West Country Farmhouse Cheddar' as a protected designation of origin. To meet this criteria the cheese must be made in the traditional manner using local ingredients in four designated counties of south-west England.
Like many cheeses, the colour of cheddar is often modified by the use of food colourings. Annatto, extracted from a tropical tree, is frequently used to give cheddar an orange colour. The origins of this practice are clouded, but the three leading theories appear to be to allow the cheese to have a consistent colour from batch to batch, to assist the purchaser in identifying the type of cheese when it is unlabelled, or to identify the cheese's region of origin. In the United States, cheddar that has not been coloured is frequently labelled as "white cheddar" or "Vermont cheddar", regardless of whether it was produced in the state of Vermont.
The United States Department of Agriculture uses three measures to track the dairy industry: milk, butter, and 40 pound (18 kg) blocks of cheddar, reporting the prices and production weekly. The state of Wisconsin produces the most cheddar in the United States, with other centers of production including upstate New York, Vermont, and Tillamook, Oregon.
Cheddar cheese is matured for varying amounts of time: the longer it is matured, the stronger the flavour. It is often sold with labels such as "mild", "medium", "sharp", "tasty", "mature", "extra sharp", "extra mature", and so on.
White House historians assert that U.S. president Andrew Jackson held an open house party where a 1,400 pound (635 kg) block of cheddar cheese was served as refreshment. A cheese of 7,000 pounds (3,175 kg) was produced in Ingersoll, Ontario in 1866 and exhibited in New York and Britain; it was immortalised in the famous poem "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds" by James McIntyre, widely alleged to be the worst poet in all of Canadian literature. A still larger Wisconsin Cheddar cheese of 34,951 pounds (15,853 kg) was produced for the New York World's Fair in 1964. It required the equivalent of the daily milk production of 16,000 cows.
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