What is Cheddar?
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably eaten a lot of Cheddar. It’s one of the most popular cheeses in the United Kingdom, accounting for about half of our national cheese consumption. But what is it, exactly?
“I think that’s a really difficult question, and that’s pretty much why we embarked on the Cheddar Mapping Project,” says Jennifer Kast, one of the cheesemakers behind Hafod Cheddar. Alongside our technical director, Bronwen Percival, she is cataloguing how cheesemakers across Britain make their Cheddar.
A selection of Cheddar
All of those cheesemakers are producing a hard cow’s milk cheese. From there, they begin to diverge. Most Cheddar cheesemakers have a “cheddaring” stage in their make, in which layers of curd are stacked on top of each other over and over again; some don’t. Many farmhouse cheesemakers are aiming for meaty, deep flavours; others are happy with juicy acidity. That’s setting aside mass-produced Cheddars, which can seem like a different cheese entirely.
In the face of these differences, it’s tempting to wave a hand and settle for a vague “you know it when you taste it.” Instead, we talked with Jennifer about the recipe, flavour, and above all, texture that defines Cheddar.
How does Cheddar taste?
When you imagine Cheddar, what flavour comes to mind? It may be the one-note creaminess or biting acidity of a supermarket block. If you’re lucky, it’s the meatiness of Montgomery’s or the booziness of Isle of Mull.
This range of possible flavours is not surprising when you consider the history of Cheddar. In the 19th century, this cheese would have been made to the rhythm of a day of farming. After milking in the morning, the cheesemaker – often one of the women of the family – would make Cheddar over a period of several hours. According to Reinventing the Wheel, descriptions of Cheddar from the late Victorian period extoll the cheese’s mellow nuttiness.
Hafod during the cheddaring process
Over time, most Cheddar production moved to factories and the process became much quicker. One technical change that made this possible is the addition of acidifying bacteria known as starter culture. This encourages a tart, biting flavour branded as “sharp.” Today, a variety of starter cultures can mask this flavour, leaving butteriness or sweetness in its place.
“In the factory, the expertise is to standardise the milk such that it can respond to the process of the machinery,” Jennifer says. With pasteurisation and the heavy use of starter cultures, every block of Cheddar can taste more or less the same. Think of the sweet-but-sharp dependability of Cathedral City.
“Our [expertise] is the opposite, where we are reading the milk so that we can tweak our process to accommodate its variability.” Hafod is made at Holden Farm Dairy, where cows graze on diverse herbal leys. Their milk can vary throughout the season, and so does the Cheddar – taking on grassier or richer flavours from batch to batch.
In other words, Cheddar can taste like a dependable, acidic, buttery block of Cathedral City. But it can also taste like a particularly grassy, rich batch of Hafod.
How is Cheddar made?
Like all cheeses, Cheddar goes through a step-by-step process from milk to curd to cheese. There are a few particularly important steps that influence its flavour and texture.
One of those important steps is cutting the curd. “We do have a slightly larger curd than other people because we do hold on to more moisture,” Jennifer says. “Then we use the syneresis of acidification to release more moisture slowly over the course of the period.” [Ed. note: Syneresis is the process by which an acidifying curd contracts naturally, aiding the expulsion of moisture.] In other words, bigger curd releases whey slowly as it acidifies. Smaller curd drains quickly, relying less on acidity for driving moisture loss and often ending up less acidic as a result.
Another key step is scalding, when the cheesemaker heats the curd. If you’d like to know how important this part of the process truly is, taste Lincolnshire Poacher next to Poacher Fifty. The former was heated to a conventional 40 degrees. The latter was heated to 50 by accident. Poacher Fifty is significantly firmer and drier than a standard batch, with strong, almost Parmesan-like flavours.
Finally, if anything defines Cheddar, you would think it would be cheddaring. Cheddaring is the process of stacking blocks of curd on top of each other, over and over again. After roughly two hours, the texture of curd changes to something like “muscle” or “foliated pastry dough," Jennifer says. This is a big part of what gives Cheddar its dense, toothsome texture.
Westcombe displaying the distinctive "foliated pastry" texture.
Cheddaring isn’t the only way to achieve this, however. At Isle of Mull, the curd is stirred with machinery; to make Lincolnshire Poacher, cheesemakers turn the curd, rather than stack it.
Is cheese still Cheddar if it hasn’t been cheddared? “If you can achieve the same texture in a different way, then the answer would be yes,” Jennifer says. “In some ways, cheddaring is just another form of texturing.”
What is the texture of Cheddar?
So, what is that Cheddar-defining texture? According to Jennifer: “nice, firm, not too brittle, but just the right amount of tooth to it.” It’s dense, like an Alpine cheese, but lacks that characteristic waxiness and pliability. It doesn’t flake off in shards, like Parmigiano Reggiano.
It shouldn’t be too soft. In Jennifer’s opinion, supermarket Cheddars hardly count as the real thing for this reason. “They are, almost always, especially once they hit room temperature, almost spreadable,” she said. At room temperature, a quality Cheddar "still has the body that can hold all of that flavour."
That flavour may be tart, nutty, savoury, fruity, or some combination of all of the above. The key is that you experience it in stages thanks to its texture. “I think that’s the characteristic that all of the Cheddars have in common.”
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A word of advice from Jennifer as you taste your next Cheddar: “Think about how the texture is allowing you to have access to the flavour, because that’s really what it’s all about.”
You can start with our Cheddar Selection, which includes every Cheddar on our slate: Hafod, Isle of Mull, Lincolnshire Poacher, Montgomery’s, Pitchfork, and Westcombe. After trying each one, you will have an expanded definition of what this cheese can be.
