Food Fact Friday: Cheddar is Better

June is National Dairy Month. I was thinking all morning about my favorite types of dairy. Thoughts of cheese were dancing in my head. One of the most popular types of cheeses is Cheddar. Cheddar has been around for almost 1,000 years! Here is an abridged version of it’s history…

Cheddar cheese is a hard, pale yellow cheese originating in the English village of Cheddar. Note that I said pale yellow…apparently adding color (like us Americans do) is a no-no. Cheddar cheese has been widely imitated, both in the United Kingdom and in other countries. By European trading standards, however, only cheese produced and sourced in four of the counties of Southwest England may be branded 'West Country Farmhouse Cheddar'.

Cheddar cheese has been produced since at least 1170. A pipe roll of King Henry II from that year recorded the purchase of 10,420 lb at about the price of $5 a ton.

Central to the modernization of Cheddar cheese was the nineteenth century Somerset dairyman Joseph Harding. Harding introduced new equipment into the process of cheese making, including his "revolving breaker" for curd cutting, saving much manual effort. He and his wife were behind the introduction of the cheese into Scotland and North America.


Cheddaring refers to an additional step in the production of Cheddar-style cheese where, after heating, the curd is kneaded with salt, then is cut into cubes to drain the whey, then stacked and turned. Strong, extra-mature Cheddar, sometimes called vintage, needs to be matured for up to 15 months. The cheese is kept at a constant temperature often requiring special facilities.

In parts of the United States and Canada, annatto, extracted from the tropical achiote tree, is used to give some Cheddar cheeses a deep orange color. Cheddar is often colored and even as early as 1860. Many food historians state that cheddar is often colored because the consumers prefer it that way.

In the United States, Cheddar cheese comes in several varieties, including mild, medium, sharp, extra sharp, New York Style, Colby/Longhorn, white, and Vermont. New York style Cheddar cheese is a particularly sharp Cheddar cheese, sometimes with a hint of smoke. Colby/Longhorn Cheddar cheese has a mild to medium flavor. Cheddar that has not been coloured is frequently labelled as "white Cheddar" or "Vermont Cheddar" (though it does not have to be produced there to be labeled “Vermont”). Vermont Cheddar is the nearest of any North American cheese to authentic English Cheddar.

The Big Cheese: The largest Wisconsin Cheddar cheese, weighing in at 34,951 lb, was produced for the 1964 New York World's Fair. It required the equivalent of the daily milk production of 16,000 cows.

Click here for a great chicken recipe using Cheddar!