September 10, 2021 • 28 mins
This quintessential English cheese has a history cut with myth, fraud, and war. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren dig into the science and history of cheddar cheese.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Any Ries and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we
have a classic episode for you about cheddar cheese. Yes. Yes, Actually,
one of um our listeners who writes in pretty frequently, Cecilia. Hello.
Cecilia just wrote and was like, you love cheese, right, well,
(00:31):
where are the cheese episodes? You need to do more
cheese episodes? Like, you're correct, I've been letting down my
cheese inner self and also cheese lovers of the world.
So sorry, yes, no, oh gosh, we always need to
(00:52):
do more cheese episodes. I feel like I feel like,
for for reasons that we'll get into a little bit
um or that we got into a little bit in
this episo, So I I like, try not to do
too many because I feel like, if you let me
start doing cheese episodes, I'll just do nothing but cheese
episodes and then we'll be a cheese shows the legitimate
(01:12):
fear yeah, which would be fine, right, but you know,
moderation always it, which is key with cheese and hard
to do. And actually, at the beginning of this pandemic,
like shut down here, UM, I had a friend who
happened to be with me, and she bought it. She
(01:35):
always brings a lot of cheese because we both love cheese,
and one of them was a you know, classic Craft
cheddar block and um, I, as you know, I've been
avoiding like going to the grocery store and like getting
really interesting with some food experiments, shall we say, And
so I finally, like a couple of months ago, it's like, okay,
(01:56):
it's time the cheddar cheese. It's time it was folded.
It was so upsetting, man, it was molded. There was
no Yeah, well, well you you learned. You learned an
(02:16):
important lesson that day. I did, but I also think
I probably will make the same mistake. But that same
friend likes to say about me any reese she never
learned through lessons. Yep. We love each other, but there's
some snark for sure, for sure. And I feel like
(02:43):
there's been a lot of big It's food stunts in
the news recently. Um and one of them is the
Craft and Cheese, the Craft Macaroni and Cheese ice cream,
which sold out. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if there's
more than the normal, or if it's just because I'm
home and I'm like noticing it, but I feel like
(03:04):
there's been a lot of them lately. Where made me
raise my eyebrow? Yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm not sure
either because I it's it's like, it's like, are are
these companies doing more of these stunts because they're like, well,
now's the time? Why not? H Yeah, Like we all
need we all need a distraction, So craft back and cheese,
(03:25):
ice cream? Go um? Or or right? Or are we
just paying more attention because we do need a distraction.
This is the chicken or the egg, but it's what's
that other one? Mountain dew or hard alcohol. These are
(03:46):
the deep questions we must answer yes, yes, yes, but
today will We're not going to get into that um,
although I would love to in the future. Today we're
gonna bring back this classic on cheddar um. So let's
(04:07):
let pass. Annie and Lauren take it away. Hello, and
welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bump and I'm
Annie Reese, and today we're finally talking about cheese, yes,
(04:28):
specifically cheddar cheese, because cheese is a massive topic that's
way too much. Lauren knows all about that, Oh I do.
She wanted infamous cheese hole. We'll be talking about that later.
And this one involves fraud, just to get you excited.
Cheese fraud. Yeah, that's the best kind of course. So
what is cheddar cheese? Lauren? Well, cheddar is a type
(04:50):
of aged cheese. It's medium hard, a chunk that will
stand up without melting or running all of her plate
and it will crumble, but in like creamy chunks rather
than fine grains. It usually has a nattiness to it
and a bit of a tang. How much tang it
can be discerned by a few labels sort of. Yeah,
as with the types of cheddar you'll probably find in
the grocery store, you've got mild, medium, sharp, and extra sharp,
(05:13):
and yeah, that's kind of at the manufacturer's discretion. There
are kind of loose guidelines. Mild has aged about three months,
Medium is twice that at six months, sharp or mature
nine months, and extra sharp or extra mature at twelve months.
Anything over that is vintage cheese. As cheese ages, it
becomes sharper or stronger and more complex and flavorful. And also,
(05:38):
chedder cheese is one of my favorite cheeses. I think
it's fine too, I mean, I think I go through
a different favorite cheese about once a day. I've got
three favorites, and this is one. If we ever come
to the other ones, and I'll reveal what they are, goodness, Okay,
all right. Cheddar cheese made in this place of origin
in and around Sumrset, is covered by the EU Protected
(06:01):
Designation of Origin West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, similar to the
AOC protections we talked about in our Champagne episode. To
qualify for this protection, the cheddar has been made with
local milk with traditional buy hand techniques and aged for
a minimum of nine months. Non West Country Farmhouse scheddar, however,
is made all over. Cheddar is the most bought and
(06:23):
eaten cheese around the world, behind mozzarella. It's the second
most popular cheese in the US. Mozzarella, by the way,
is because of pizza and string cheese. Yeah. Wisconsin is
the largest producer of cheddar here in the States, and
the average American eats thirty two point five pounds of
cheese a year cheddar or otherwise, and Greece it's reportedly
twice that number, though it's also the most popular cheese
(06:44):
when it comes to scientific studies. Yeah, and speaking of science.
Let's talk about the science of how cheddar cheese is made.
Cheese science. Yeah, yeah, cheese was the topic that got
me um started off on My love Affair with bacteria.
Poop's where it all became it is and and we
mentioned it on the show like literally today and also
(07:04):
other times. But yeah, I went through this whole cheese
obsession month a couple of years ago where every project
I worked on it was about cheese. Whether that made
me more or less fun at parties is highly subjective. Fun.
There's also this like white board drawing like a cheese
family tree that Laura it was there forever, forever. Yeah,
(07:26):
the etymology of the word cheese was this whole project
I was really trying to get an anomalogy show started
up with with Caroline and never never quit got off
the ground. But okay, so cheddar cheese starts the same
way all cheese does with milk. Yeah, so let's talk
about how you turn liquid milk into solid cheese. Those
(07:49):
of you who listened to our episode on yogurt will
remember the first part of the process. A milk contains
a lot of solid molecules, but they all massed together
as a liquid because milk as an emulsion. Emulsion is
just the science word for a mixture of things that
don't usually mix, like oil and water, but emulsions such
as milk or mayonnaise are bottled salad dressing. Emulsions contain
(08:12):
both fats and water evenly dispersed throughout the other. In milk,
this happens because of the structure of milks protein molecules.
Milk has these complex proteins called casins that have both
hydrophilic that means water loving and lipophilic that means fat
loving parts. When presented with both water and fats, casin's
(08:33):
grab bits of fat and cluster up into globules called
my cells, with the fat hoarded on the inside and
those water loving, hydrophilic bits on the outside. These my
cells are all negatively charged particles, which means they repel
each other like you know magnets. Yeah. Um, so if
you give them a neutral base of water to float
around in, they'll disperse themselves evenly throughout it, creating an emulsion. Yes,
(08:59):
So to make this liquid milk and solid cheese, you
need to de emulsify it a k a coagulate it
by mucking around with those my cells You want to
neutralize their charge so that they stopped repelling each other,
so you add some syblactic acid bacteria. Bacteria poop. These
are friendly germs that eat the sugars and milk and
(09:20):
excrete acids. Acid neutralizes them my cells and they start
clumping together. The bacteria also excrete flavor molecules, so particular
strains are used for different cheeses. Lactobac silus case s
I k c I case caussee and Lactobac silous planetarum
are common for cheddar. M hmm, what happens if you
(09:42):
stopped there? If you stop there, you have yogurt, and
that's delicious. But if you continue the coagulation process via
either heat or chemical stuff or both, that's when you
get cheese. I accidentally made cottage cheese the first time
I tried making yogurt because I overheated it. The eat
agitates more water out of the clumping my cells, and
(10:03):
you get solid curds that are mostly proteins and fats,
and liquid whey that's mostly water and a few water
soluble things. The curds are the cheese, and the way
is discarded or usually in you know industry, used for
something else because it's nutritious and delicious tastes just like
way exactly. Yeah. In the case of cheddar, like many cheeses,
(10:25):
part of this coagulation process is adding renet, which is
a product made up of proteolytic enzymes, meaning enzymes that
break stuff down, which, in renette's case, helps the solids
and milk clot together. Natural renett comes from the fourth
stomach lining of young cows, goats, and sheep. When it's
(10:47):
in there, it helps the animal digest its mother's milk
by separating out the way from the curds. Traditionally, rennet
is added to cheese by soaking pieces of dried stomach
and water and then straining and adding the water to
the curdling milk. But in case that just totally grossed
you out, don't don't worry. For first off. First off,
(11:08):
animals are not killed just to make rennette. It is
a byproduct of the meat industry, and most renette these
days doesn't actually come from stomach linings at all, but
from lab farmed bacteria or fungi that either naturally produce
similar enzymes or have been genetically modified to do so,
and some plants like fig leaves and thistle make rennette
(11:30):
like enzymes as well. Interesting. Okay, so you've done, You've
done your your bacteria coagulation, you've done your rennet coagulation,
and at this point you've got your cheese curds, which
are themselves delightful. If you've never had cheese curds, go
find some. You might need to go to Wisconsin. They
(11:50):
make your teeth squeak. There there's I know, it's oh,
it's great, okay, But to get to cheddar, you've got
to press and age these kurds. Pressing helps even more
of the moisture out, which uh, you need to do
in order to create cheddars firm texture. The specific method
that was developed for pressing cheddar curds is used for
other cheeses. It's called cheddar ing, which is the best word,
(12:14):
and we've got a note on it later on. Um
cheesemakers do also add salt to draw water out of
the cheese and add a bit of flavor and stop
the action of those lactic acid bacteria which have been
continuing to do their fermentation thing this whole time. The
reduction and water content lowers the pH of the cheese.
Making it more acidic, which helps make the final cheese
(12:35):
both tangy and firm MHM. The kurds are then pressed
into hoops or other molds, and then they're ready for storage.
During aging, molecules in the cheese slowly break down, releasing
compounds that affect the cheese is flavor and texture, making
it more and more delicious all the time. Sometimes dyes
(12:57):
are added to the milk during the early stages of
the hurtling process. Though Craft Cheese, some of you have
probably heard of that, they announced that it was going
to be doing away with the artificial eyes and some
of their macaroni and cheese products. I mean that bright
neon orange isn't cheese is natural color. But why were
(13:18):
they using dies in the first place? Why is cheddar
orange YEA deep questions. We'll get to that and so
much more history stuff after a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(13:41):
thank you. So the first cheese probably originated in a
way that's similar to yogurt. That is, dairy being transported
into animal skins, animal bladders getting agitated, getting supposed to
electic acid bacteria and renette and This all dates back
to when we first started domesticating milk producing herd animals
like goats and cows and sheep, maybe around ten thousand BC.
(14:04):
Once the process was nailed down a bit more, it
was seen as a great way for farmers to use
up surplus milk before we had refrigeration are a good
way of transporting it. There's evidence of cheesemaking and farming
settlements going back as far as five thousand, five hundred
b C. Traces of dairy fat have been found in
ceramic fragments stating from around that time. And if you're
(14:26):
looking for some more homework, the butter episode was kind
of tied to this, and there's that whole pool between
like should we use this surplus milk for butter or cheese? Yeah,
so the yougurt one in the butter one closely related, definitely.
Um Cheddar itself is named after the district it comes from,
located in the southwestern county of Somerset, England, or possibly
(14:47):
from the Cheddar Gorge are the caves nearby. The constant
cool temperature and humidity of these caves made it ideal
for cheddar storage and maturation. The best alternative pre refrigerator.
Folklora out of Cheddar tells the tale of a milkmaid
who left a pail of milk in the nearby caves
and forgot it there. When she stumbled upon it some
(15:08):
time later, she found that instead of milk, she had
this delicious tasting cheese thing. From there, others set out
to recreate this accident and get more of that cheese stuff.
In nineteen o three, by the way, nineteen o three CE,
some workers discovered the oldest intact human skeleton in these caves.
What it was dated to seven thousand and now is
(15:32):
known as the Cheddar Man, and you can see him.
I can't recall it what museum, but some museum in Britain.
It's also a relatively new Ish cheese. As far back
as the eleventh century see farmers in Cheddar, England were
making Cheddar cheese. We know that because the first written
record of it is dated at eleven seventy c E.
When King Henry the Second purchased ten thousand, two forty
(15:54):
pounds of Cheddar cheese at the rate of a farthing
per pound, he espoused its superiority to all other cheeses.
His son followed his example on that too. Cheesemakers they're
discovered that the more moisture you could remove, the longer
the cheese lasted. And they did this by piling slabs
of curds on top of each other to press out
(16:15):
the liquid way, and this was called cheddar ing and
um it also stretched out these slabs of curds and
made a harder cheese. Another monarch, Charles the First, who
reigned during the sixteen hundreds, was an enormous cheddar cheese fan.
He was enormously fond of cheddar cheese. Not necessarily, I
don't know. I actually don't was he was chubby? Where's
the first Jonathan when you need him? I don't think
(16:36):
he was chubby. He was. He loved cheddar cheese, is
what we're trying to say. But the his demand exceeded supply,
which meant that it was being purchased by him even
before it was made. It was only available to members
of the court, like an early example of pre ordering.
Around this time in the seventeenth century, we arrived at
(16:58):
the color thing and fraud. Yes, if you think about it,
she should probably be white, right right or not? Necessarily
a lot of cheeses in England had a yellowish orange tent,
particularly if the milk used to make the cheese came
from two breeds of cows, the Jersey and the Guernsey.
(17:20):
That's because the grass where they were located contained a
lot of beta carotene, which gave the milk color. We
touched on this a bit in our butter episode and
uh we talked about how the diet of the cow
when the season changes the color of their milk, or
rather not the not the color of the milk, because
milk is always white, but the content of the milk.
(17:40):
Butter and cheese can be yellow despite milk being white,
because that beta carotene is fat soluble, which means it's
locked away in the fat ballcules and milk, which you'll
remember from the beginning of the episode, are themselves locked
away inside of my cells, or they are, at least
until you start messing around with the my cells, and
the process of making butter and cheese causes some of
(18:02):
milks fats to get released, and the beta carotene can
come blinking into the sunshine and color the cheese or
the or the butter. At times when cows eat more
fresh grass than dried hay or other feed uh A,
The grass itself is more nutritious, and so they're better
able to produce extra fatty, nutritious milk and b It's
(18:23):
usually during warm seasons when cows bodies are working to
produce more high quality milk due to the natural swing
of their hormones, and all that good stuff in milk
adds flavor to the finished cheese, and aging cheese longer
brings out more of those color molecules and more flavor molecules. Thus,
in Cheddar, that orange yellowy hue was seen as an
(18:47):
indicator of quality. You know where this is going, I
bet you do. Cheesemakers in England new they could make
more money they skimmed off the cream to make butter,
or if they sold the cream separately. The problem was
that during so got rid of the color, that mark
of quality that let you sell it at a higher price,
which was mostly the byproduct of that fatty cream you't
(19:09):
skimmed off. But these enterprising cheesemakers and fraudsters didn't let
that stop them. They got the idea to fake it,
essentially to dye the cheese. At first, they added things
like marigold, saffron, and carrot juice. Then they started using
something called a nato derived from the seeds of chocolate plants,
and this is what Craft plans to replace the artificial
(19:29):
dyes with. By the way um, their scheme succeeded and
unsuspecting Londoner, Londoners purchased dye cheese thinking they were getting
high quality, full fat cheddar. The help of marketing and
as cheddar spread further away from England, the color cemented
itself in the minds of consumers. If it wasn't bright orange,
(19:50):
it wasn't cheddar. It became the standard the traditions of
dyeing cheese. The traditions of dyeing cheese spread as the
cheese itself to it, but it didn't really catch on
in New England. Theories now that the use of dyes
and cheddar really cemented during the industrialization of the cheese
industry in the nineteen hundreds, when consumers started associating brand
(20:13):
consistency with quality. But but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Yes,
we will talk more about cheddar's past and future after
one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(20:37):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. Daniel Dafoe's book, A
Tour of the Islands of Great Britain, dedicated a whole
chapter to cheddar, both place and cheese. This is how
big like cheddar was becoming. At first cheddar could only
be made locally, and then that kind of made it
a local product and a luxury product a bit. But
(20:57):
when pilgrims started making the journey to America, Puritan dairy
farmers brought with them the methods of making cheddar cheese.
By seventeen ninety, American made cheddar was being exported back
to Europe. At first, cheese in the US was based
in New England, but gradually it spread west. For half
a century and the eighteen hundreds, the western region of
Ohio was known as Cheesedom. As colonists and immigrants from
(21:23):
places like Switzerland, Germany, and Norway settled in Wisconsin, they
bought with them the tradition of farm made cheese. The U.
S Census from eighteen fifty reports four hundred thousand, two
d three pounds of cheese made on Wisconsin farms for
the year of eighteen forty nine. In the summer of
eighteen forty five saw the arrival of the first immigrants
from Glaris, Switzerland, settling in Greene County, Wisconsin. They set
(21:49):
up a community they called New Glaris. Yes, that New
Glaris for people in Wisconsin. You know what I'm talking about.
I've got no idea. Oh oh no, oh, we gotta
fix that, like immediately. Goodbye. Wait um uh. Anyway, it's
it's like a they make beer and cheese. It's very good,
(22:10):
and Wisconsin's role in the cheese production is topic for
a whole another episode. During Queen Victoria's rule in the
eighteen hundreds, she was gifted with a pound chunk of cheddar.
Oh yeah, it was an offering at her wedding. It
took the milk from seven fifty cows. The farmers who
gave it to her asked her to put it on display,
(22:31):
which she did, but then declined to take it back
after the exhibition was over, perhaps not knowing to do
with twelve hundred pounds of cheese that was on exhibition
for who knows how long. We're not quite sure what
happened to it after that. Actually, the current record for
largest cheddar goes to the ninety nine fifties six thousand,
eight hundred fifty pounds chunk of cheese made by the
(22:52):
Federation of American Cheesemakers in organ that I can't even
imagine that mom cheese. A couple of important developments the
nineteenth century made it possible for the mass production of cheddar.
The first was when Joseph Harding, dairy farmer in Somerset,
invented a cheese mill capable of cutting up the cheese
curds and came up with the method for scalding the
curds to get the texture, which way spread up the
(23:16):
process as compared to the previous method of just weighing
down the curds and waiting. Yeah. He also went around
teaching dairy farmers this method in Scotland and North America.
For his efforts, history often remembers him as the father
of cheddar cheese. It's quite the title. Soon after, in
eighteen fifty one, the first cheese factory opened in New York,
(23:36):
and New York was the state that produced the most
cheddar cheese before cheese making spread west, their specialty was cheddar.
A lot of the cheddar ended up getting exported back
to Britain. When James Craft yep that Craft moved to
Chicago three he wanted to find a way to recycle
and sell on used bits of cheddar, since it was
(23:58):
the first and most factory produced cheese. By adding some
sodium phosphate to repasteurized cheddar, he came up with the
Craft single a k A. American cheese in nineteen six
During World War Two, this was a staple for soldiers,
and I am hyper pumped to do a future episode
about this type of cheese, also sometimes called processed cheese.
(24:21):
It is fascinating all of the regulations about how much
cheese can be in your cheese product. All, yeah, it's great.
When Captain Robert Scott embarked on his nineteen o one
journey to Antarctica, he took with him three thousand, five
hundred pounds about six of cheddar. Made cheddar cheese interesting
(24:43):
choice and great excuse to go down failed Antarctic exhibition
or have a whole researching cheddar cheese. If you've ever
wondered why cheddar or cheese is slang for money, it
goes back to the eighteen sixties when recipients of food
stamps and welfare in the U s Were treated to
(25:04):
government cheese, but that consisted of was a mixture of
cheese is blended together with a multifiers and any surplus milk.
At the time, people might ask you if you'd gotten
your cheese yet, meaning your government supplement. Or it could
go back even further to World War two and the
British government banned all types of cheese except cheddar. It
(25:24):
was given the nickname Government Cheddar. This band remained for
nine years after the war ended, and before World War
One Britain had three thousand, five hundred cheesemakers in business,
but there were less than one hundred after World War Two.
They're in the process of bouncing back and dads with
a lot of things. Cheddar is undergoing a bit of
(25:45):
a renaissance, a cheese revolution, I read in a couple
of places, with more and more small farms and cheesemakers
entering the business and giving us many many products to try.
And speaking of trying, oh yeah, speaking of so okay,
you know we we we talked a little bit about
how cheddar tastes. But how do you turn that into
(26:05):
an amazing meal for all of your senses? How do
you pair it with stuff? I mean, I like to
chest eat it straight, but there's there's things um experts
have a list of words, by the way for describing
the flavor of cheddar, including brothy, caddy, calie, fecal, moldy, nutty, scorched, sulfur,
(26:28):
and waxy. They have a lot more than that. Those
were just some of my favorites. Cheddar cheese is used
in all kinds of things, mac and cheese, real cheese, cheddar, biscuits, cheddar, soup,
waffle skirts, apple pie. But I like it with apple
slices straight. Yeah, it's my favorite. If you're looking to
pair your cheddar cheese with a beverage, it's good with
ale and England. You can get this thing called a
(26:48):
plow and s lunch, which is sort of a platter
with cheddar, pickles, apple slices, bread and ale. Or a
good dry cabinet sagna would go well, also a dry slider.
There's lots of things cheese. It's cheese, I mean, and
she's scientifically has been proven to improve the taste of
so so wine. So so try any parent you like. Yeah, yeah,
(27:12):
and that is our first for cheese. There will be
many anymore. Oh yes, Oh, I'm so oh, I'm still
really really I'm real excited about it. Yeah, it's gonna
be great. That brings us to the end on this
classic episode on Cheddar Cheese. Uh. We hope that you
enjoyed it as much as we clearly loved talking about
(27:35):
it and researching it. If you like cheese, I hope
that you have some cheese in your future. Always, always, always,
And if you would like to email us, you can,
and we would love to hear from you. Our email
is hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on
social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
(27:55):
Instagram at savor pod um. And yes, we do hope
to hear from you. Um. Uh. We always hope that
there's cheese in your future, and we always hope to
hear from you. Uh. Savor is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts in my Heart Radio, you
can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always
to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to
(28:18):
you for listening, and we hope that lots more good
things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Any Ries and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we
have a classic episode for you about cheddar cheese. Yes. Yes, Actually,
one of um our listeners who writes in pretty frequently, Cecilia. Hello.
Cecilia just wrote and was like, you love cheese, right, well,
(00:31):
where are the cheese episodes? You need to do more
cheese episodes? Like, you're correct, I've been letting down my
cheese inner self and also cheese lovers of the world.
So sorry, yes, no, oh gosh, we always need to
(00:52):
do more cheese episodes. I feel like I feel like,
for for reasons that we'll get into a little bit
um or that we got into a little bit in
this episo, So I I like, try not to do
too many because I feel like, if you let me
start doing cheese episodes, I'll just do nothing but cheese
episodes and then we'll be a cheese shows the legitimate
(01:12):
fear yeah, which would be fine, right, but you know,
moderation always it, which is key with cheese and hard
to do. And actually, at the beginning of this pandemic,
like shut down here, UM, I had a friend who
happened to be with me, and she bought it. She
(01:35):
always brings a lot of cheese because we both love cheese,
and one of them was a you know, classic Craft
cheddar block and um, I, as you know, I've been
avoiding like going to the grocery store and like getting
really interesting with some food experiments, shall we say, And
so I finally, like a couple of months ago, it's like, okay,
(01:56):
it's time the cheddar cheese. It's time it was folded.
It was so upsetting, man, it was molded. There was
no Yeah, well, well you you learned. You learned an
(02:16):
important lesson that day. I did, but I also think
I probably will make the same mistake. But that same
friend likes to say about me any reese she never
learned through lessons. Yep. We love each other, but there's
some snark for sure, for sure. And I feel like
(02:43):
there's been a lot of big It's food stunts in
the news recently. Um and one of them is the
Craft and Cheese, the Craft Macaroni and Cheese ice cream,
which sold out. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if there's
more than the normal, or if it's just because I'm
home and I'm like noticing it, but I feel like
(03:04):
there's been a lot of them lately. Where made me
raise my eyebrow? Yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm not sure
either because I it's it's like, it's like, are are
these companies doing more of these stunts because they're like, well,
now's the time? Why not? H Yeah, Like we all
need we all need a distraction, So craft back and cheese,
(03:25):
ice cream? Go um? Or or right? Or are we
just paying more attention because we do need a distraction.
This is the chicken or the egg, but it's what's
that other one? Mountain dew or hard alcohol. These are
(03:46):
the deep questions we must answer yes, yes, yes, but
today will We're not going to get into that um,
although I would love to in the future. Today we're
gonna bring back this classic on cheddar um. So let's
(04:07):
let pass. Annie and Lauren take it away. Hello, and
welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bump and I'm
Annie Reese, and today we're finally talking about cheese, yes,
(04:28):
specifically cheddar cheese, because cheese is a massive topic that's
way too much. Lauren knows all about that, Oh I do.
She wanted infamous cheese hole. We'll be talking about that later.
And this one involves fraud, just to get you excited.
Cheese fraud. Yeah, that's the best kind of course. So
what is cheddar cheese? Lauren? Well, cheddar is a type
(04:50):
of aged cheese. It's medium hard, a chunk that will
stand up without melting or running all of her plate
and it will crumble, but in like creamy chunks rather
than fine grains. It usually has a nattiness to it
and a bit of a tang. How much tang it
can be discerned by a few labels sort of. Yeah,
as with the types of cheddar you'll probably find in
the grocery store, you've got mild, medium, sharp, and extra sharp,
(05:13):
and yeah, that's kind of at the manufacturer's discretion. There
are kind of loose guidelines. Mild has aged about three months,
Medium is twice that at six months, sharp or mature
nine months, and extra sharp or extra mature at twelve months.
Anything over that is vintage cheese. As cheese ages, it
becomes sharper or stronger and more complex and flavorful. And also,
(05:38):
chedder cheese is one of my favorite cheeses. I think
it's fine too, I mean, I think I go through
a different favorite cheese about once a day. I've got
three favorites, and this is one. If we ever come
to the other ones, and I'll reveal what they are, goodness, Okay,
all right. Cheddar cheese made in this place of origin
in and around Sumrset, is covered by the EU Protected
(06:01):
Designation of Origin West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, similar to the
AOC protections we talked about in our Champagne episode. To
qualify for this protection, the cheddar has been made with
local milk with traditional buy hand techniques and aged for
a minimum of nine months. Non West Country Farmhouse scheddar, however,
is made all over. Cheddar is the most bought and
(06:23):
eaten cheese around the world, behind mozzarella. It's the second
most popular cheese in the US. Mozzarella, by the way,
is because of pizza and string cheese. Yeah. Wisconsin is
the largest producer of cheddar here in the States, and
the average American eats thirty two point five pounds of
cheese a year cheddar or otherwise, and Greece it's reportedly
twice that number, though it's also the most popular cheese
(06:44):
when it comes to scientific studies. Yeah, and speaking of science.
Let's talk about the science of how cheddar cheese is made.
Cheese science. Yeah, yeah, cheese was the topic that got
me um started off on My love Affair with bacteria.
Poop's where it all became it is and and we
mentioned it on the show like literally today and also
(07:04):
other times. But yeah, I went through this whole cheese
obsession month a couple of years ago where every project
I worked on it was about cheese. Whether that made
me more or less fun at parties is highly subjective. Fun.
There's also this like white board drawing like a cheese
family tree that Laura it was there forever, forever. Yeah,
(07:26):
the etymology of the word cheese was this whole project
I was really trying to get an anomalogy show started
up with with Caroline and never never quit got off
the ground. But okay, so cheddar cheese starts the same
way all cheese does with milk. Yeah, so let's talk
about how you turn liquid milk into solid cheese. Those
(07:49):
of you who listened to our episode on yogurt will
remember the first part of the process. A milk contains
a lot of solid molecules, but they all massed together
as a liquid because milk as an emulsion. Emulsion is
just the science word for a mixture of things that
don't usually mix, like oil and water, but emulsions such
as milk or mayonnaise are bottled salad dressing. Emulsions contain
(08:12):
both fats and water evenly dispersed throughout the other. In milk,
this happens because of the structure of milks protein molecules.
Milk has these complex proteins called casins that have both
hydrophilic that means water loving and lipophilic that means fat
loving parts. When presented with both water and fats, casin's
(08:33):
grab bits of fat and cluster up into globules called
my cells, with the fat hoarded on the inside and
those water loving, hydrophilic bits on the outside. These my
cells are all negatively charged particles, which means they repel
each other like you know magnets. Yeah. Um, so if
you give them a neutral base of water to float
around in, they'll disperse themselves evenly throughout it, creating an emulsion. Yes,
(08:59):
So to make this liquid milk and solid cheese, you
need to de emulsify it a k a coagulate it
by mucking around with those my cells You want to
neutralize their charge so that they stopped repelling each other,
so you add some syblactic acid bacteria. Bacteria poop. These
are friendly germs that eat the sugars and milk and
(09:20):
excrete acids. Acid neutralizes them my cells and they start
clumping together. The bacteria also excrete flavor molecules, so particular
strains are used for different cheeses. Lactobac silus case s
I k c I case caussee and Lactobac silous planetarum
are common for cheddar. M hmm, what happens if you
(09:42):
stopped there? If you stop there, you have yogurt, and
that's delicious. But if you continue the coagulation process via
either heat or chemical stuff or both, that's when you
get cheese. I accidentally made cottage cheese the first time
I tried making yogurt because I overheated it. The eat
agitates more water out of the clumping my cells, and
(10:03):
you get solid curds that are mostly proteins and fats,
and liquid whey that's mostly water and a few water
soluble things. The curds are the cheese, and the way
is discarded or usually in you know industry, used for
something else because it's nutritious and delicious tastes just like
way exactly. Yeah. In the case of cheddar, like many cheeses,
(10:25):
part of this coagulation process is adding renet, which is
a product made up of proteolytic enzymes, meaning enzymes that
break stuff down, which, in renette's case, helps the solids
and milk clot together. Natural renett comes from the fourth
stomach lining of young cows, goats, and sheep. When it's
(10:47):
in there, it helps the animal digest its mother's milk
by separating out the way from the curds. Traditionally, rennet
is added to cheese by soaking pieces of dried stomach
and water and then straining and adding the water to
the curdling milk. But in case that just totally grossed
you out, don't don't worry. For first off. First off,
(11:08):
animals are not killed just to make rennette. It is
a byproduct of the meat industry, and most renette these
days doesn't actually come from stomach linings at all, but
from lab farmed bacteria or fungi that either naturally produce
similar enzymes or have been genetically modified to do so,
and some plants like fig leaves and thistle make rennette
(11:30):
like enzymes as well. Interesting. Okay, so you've done, You've
done your your bacteria coagulation, you've done your rennet coagulation,
and at this point you've got your cheese curds, which
are themselves delightful. If you've never had cheese curds, go
find some. You might need to go to Wisconsin. They
(11:50):
make your teeth squeak. There there's I know, it's oh,
it's great, okay, But to get to cheddar, you've got
to press and age these kurds. Pressing helps even more
of the moisture out, which uh, you need to do
in order to create cheddars firm texture. The specific method
that was developed for pressing cheddar curds is used for
other cheeses. It's called cheddar ing, which is the best word,
(12:14):
and we've got a note on it later on. Um
cheesemakers do also add salt to draw water out of
the cheese and add a bit of flavor and stop
the action of those lactic acid bacteria which have been
continuing to do their fermentation thing this whole time. The
reduction and water content lowers the pH of the cheese.
Making it more acidic, which helps make the final cheese
(12:35):
both tangy and firm MHM. The kurds are then pressed
into hoops or other molds, and then they're ready for storage.
During aging, molecules in the cheese slowly break down, releasing
compounds that affect the cheese is flavor and texture, making
it more and more delicious all the time. Sometimes dyes
(12:57):
are added to the milk during the early stages of
the hurtling process. Though Craft Cheese, some of you have
probably heard of that, they announced that it was going
to be doing away with the artificial eyes and some
of their macaroni and cheese products. I mean that bright
neon orange isn't cheese is natural color. But why were
(13:18):
they using dies in the first place? Why is cheddar
orange YEA deep questions. We'll get to that and so
much more history stuff after a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(13:41):
thank you. So the first cheese probably originated in a
way that's similar to yogurt. That is, dairy being transported
into animal skins, animal bladders getting agitated, getting supposed to
electic acid bacteria and renette and This all dates back
to when we first started domesticating milk producing herd animals
like goats and cows and sheep, maybe around ten thousand BC.
(14:04):
Once the process was nailed down a bit more, it
was seen as a great way for farmers to use
up surplus milk before we had refrigeration are a good
way of transporting it. There's evidence of cheesemaking and farming
settlements going back as far as five thousand, five hundred
b C. Traces of dairy fat have been found in
ceramic fragments stating from around that time. And if you're
(14:26):
looking for some more homework, the butter episode was kind
of tied to this, and there's that whole pool between
like should we use this surplus milk for butter or cheese? Yeah,
so the yougurt one in the butter one closely related, definitely.
Um Cheddar itself is named after the district it comes from,
located in the southwestern county of Somerset, England, or possibly
(14:47):
from the Cheddar Gorge are the caves nearby. The constant
cool temperature and humidity of these caves made it ideal
for cheddar storage and maturation. The best alternative pre refrigerator.
Folklora out of Cheddar tells the tale of a milkmaid
who left a pail of milk in the nearby caves
and forgot it there. When she stumbled upon it some
(15:08):
time later, she found that instead of milk, she had
this delicious tasting cheese thing. From there, others set out
to recreate this accident and get more of that cheese stuff.
In nineteen o three, by the way, nineteen o three CE,
some workers discovered the oldest intact human skeleton in these caves.
What it was dated to seven thousand and now is
(15:32):
known as the Cheddar Man, and you can see him.
I can't recall it what museum, but some museum in Britain.
It's also a relatively new Ish cheese. As far back
as the eleventh century see farmers in Cheddar, England were
making Cheddar cheese. We know that because the first written
record of it is dated at eleven seventy c E.
When King Henry the Second purchased ten thousand, two forty
(15:54):
pounds of Cheddar cheese at the rate of a farthing
per pound, he espoused its superiority to all other cheeses.
His son followed his example on that too. Cheesemakers they're
discovered that the more moisture you could remove, the longer
the cheese lasted. And they did this by piling slabs
of curds on top of each other to press out
(16:15):
the liquid way, and this was called cheddar ing and
um it also stretched out these slabs of curds and
made a harder cheese. Another monarch, Charles the First, who
reigned during the sixteen hundreds, was an enormous cheddar cheese fan.
He was enormously fond of cheddar cheese. Not necessarily, I
don't know. I actually don't was he was chubby? Where's
the first Jonathan when you need him? I don't think
(16:36):
he was chubby. He was. He loved cheddar cheese, is
what we're trying to say. But the his demand exceeded supply,
which meant that it was being purchased by him even
before it was made. It was only available to members
of the court, like an early example of pre ordering.
Around this time in the seventeenth century, we arrived at
(16:58):
the color thing and fraud. Yes, if you think about it,
she should probably be white, right right or not? Necessarily
a lot of cheeses in England had a yellowish orange tent,
particularly if the milk used to make the cheese came
from two breeds of cows, the Jersey and the Guernsey.
(17:20):
That's because the grass where they were located contained a
lot of beta carotene, which gave the milk color. We
touched on this a bit in our butter episode and
uh we talked about how the diet of the cow
when the season changes the color of their milk, or
rather not the not the color of the milk, because
milk is always white, but the content of the milk.
(17:40):
Butter and cheese can be yellow despite milk being white,
because that beta carotene is fat soluble, which means it's
locked away in the fat ballcules and milk, which you'll
remember from the beginning of the episode, are themselves locked
away inside of my cells, or they are, at least
until you start messing around with the my cells, and
the process of making butter and cheese causes some of
(18:02):
milks fats to get released, and the beta carotene can
come blinking into the sunshine and color the cheese or
the or the butter. At times when cows eat more
fresh grass than dried hay or other feed uh A,
The grass itself is more nutritious, and so they're better
able to produce extra fatty, nutritious milk and b It's
(18:23):
usually during warm seasons when cows bodies are working to
produce more high quality milk due to the natural swing
of their hormones, and all that good stuff in milk
adds flavor to the finished cheese, and aging cheese longer
brings out more of those color molecules and more flavor molecules. Thus,
in Cheddar, that orange yellowy hue was seen as an
(18:47):
indicator of quality. You know where this is going, I
bet you do. Cheesemakers in England new they could make
more money they skimmed off the cream to make butter,
or if they sold the cream separately. The problem was
that during so got rid of the color, that mark
of quality that let you sell it at a higher price,
which was mostly the byproduct of that fatty cream you't
(19:09):
skimmed off. But these enterprising cheesemakers and fraudsters didn't let
that stop them. They got the idea to fake it,
essentially to dye the cheese. At first, they added things
like marigold, saffron, and carrot juice. Then they started using
something called a nato derived from the seeds of chocolate plants,
and this is what Craft plans to replace the artificial
(19:29):
dyes with. By the way um, their scheme succeeded and
unsuspecting Londoner, Londoners purchased dye cheese thinking they were getting
high quality, full fat cheddar. The help of marketing and
as cheddar spread further away from England, the color cemented
itself in the minds of consumers. If it wasn't bright orange,
(19:50):
it wasn't cheddar. It became the standard the traditions of
dyeing cheese. The traditions of dyeing cheese spread as the
cheese itself to it, but it didn't really catch on
in New England. Theories now that the use of dyes
and cheddar really cemented during the industrialization of the cheese
industry in the nineteen hundreds, when consumers started associating brand
(20:13):
consistency with quality. But but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Yes,
we will talk more about cheddar's past and future after
one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(20:37):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. Daniel Dafoe's book, A
Tour of the Islands of Great Britain, dedicated a whole
chapter to cheddar, both place and cheese. This is how
big like cheddar was becoming. At first cheddar could only
be made locally, and then that kind of made it
a local product and a luxury product a bit. But
(20:57):
when pilgrims started making the journey to America, Puritan dairy
farmers brought with them the methods of making cheddar cheese.
By seventeen ninety, American made cheddar was being exported back
to Europe. At first, cheese in the US was based
in New England, but gradually it spread west. For half
a century and the eighteen hundreds, the western region of
Ohio was known as Cheesedom. As colonists and immigrants from
(21:23):
places like Switzerland, Germany, and Norway settled in Wisconsin, they
bought with them the tradition of farm made cheese. The U.
S Census from eighteen fifty reports four hundred thousand, two
d three pounds of cheese made on Wisconsin farms for
the year of eighteen forty nine. In the summer of
eighteen forty five saw the arrival of the first immigrants
from Glaris, Switzerland, settling in Greene County, Wisconsin. They set
(21:49):
up a community they called New Glaris. Yes, that New
Glaris for people in Wisconsin. You know what I'm talking about.
I've got no idea. Oh oh no, oh, we gotta
fix that, like immediately. Goodbye. Wait um uh. Anyway, it's
it's like a they make beer and cheese. It's very good,
(22:10):
and Wisconsin's role in the cheese production is topic for
a whole another episode. During Queen Victoria's rule in the
eighteen hundreds, she was gifted with a pound chunk of cheddar.
Oh yeah, it was an offering at her wedding. It
took the milk from seven fifty cows. The farmers who
gave it to her asked her to put it on display,
(22:31):
which she did, but then declined to take it back
after the exhibition was over, perhaps not knowing to do
with twelve hundred pounds of cheese that was on exhibition
for who knows how long. We're not quite sure what
happened to it after that. Actually, the current record for
largest cheddar goes to the ninety nine fifties six thousand,
eight hundred fifty pounds chunk of cheese made by the
(22:52):
Federation of American Cheesemakers in organ that I can't even
imagine that mom cheese. A couple of important developments the
nineteenth century made it possible for the mass production of cheddar.
The first was when Joseph Harding, dairy farmer in Somerset,
invented a cheese mill capable of cutting up the cheese
curds and came up with the method for scalding the
curds to get the texture, which way spread up the
(23:16):
process as compared to the previous method of just weighing
down the curds and waiting. Yeah. He also went around
teaching dairy farmers this method in Scotland and North America.
For his efforts, history often remembers him as the father
of cheddar cheese. It's quite the title. Soon after, in
eighteen fifty one, the first cheese factory opened in New York,
(23:36):
and New York was the state that produced the most
cheddar cheese before cheese making spread west, their specialty was cheddar.
A lot of the cheddar ended up getting exported back
to Britain. When James Craft yep that Craft moved to
Chicago three he wanted to find a way to recycle
and sell on used bits of cheddar, since it was
(23:58):
the first and most factory produced cheese. By adding some
sodium phosphate to repasteurized cheddar, he came up with the
Craft single a k A. American cheese in nineteen six
During World War Two, this was a staple for soldiers,
and I am hyper pumped to do a future episode
about this type of cheese, also sometimes called processed cheese.
(24:21):
It is fascinating all of the regulations about how much
cheese can be in your cheese product. All, yeah, it's great.
When Captain Robert Scott embarked on his nineteen o one
journey to Antarctica, he took with him three thousand, five
hundred pounds about six of cheddar. Made cheddar cheese interesting
(24:43):
choice and great excuse to go down failed Antarctic exhibition
or have a whole researching cheddar cheese. If you've ever
wondered why cheddar or cheese is slang for money, it
goes back to the eighteen sixties when recipients of food
stamps and welfare in the U s Were treated to
(25:04):
government cheese, but that consisted of was a mixture of
cheese is blended together with a multifiers and any surplus milk.
At the time, people might ask you if you'd gotten
your cheese yet, meaning your government supplement. Or it could
go back even further to World War two and the
British government banned all types of cheese except cheddar. It
(25:24):
was given the nickname Government Cheddar. This band remained for
nine years after the war ended, and before World War
One Britain had three thousand, five hundred cheesemakers in business,
but there were less than one hundred after World War Two.
They're in the process of bouncing back and dads with
a lot of things. Cheddar is undergoing a bit of
(25:45):
a renaissance, a cheese revolution, I read in a couple
of places, with more and more small farms and cheesemakers
entering the business and giving us many many products to try.
And speaking of trying, oh yeah, speaking of so okay,
you know we we we talked a little bit about
how cheddar tastes. But how do you turn that into
(26:05):
an amazing meal for all of your senses? How do
you pair it with stuff? I mean, I like to
chest eat it straight, but there's there's things um experts
have a list of words, by the way for describing
the flavor of cheddar, including brothy, caddy, calie, fecal, moldy, nutty, scorched, sulfur,
(26:28):
and waxy. They have a lot more than that. Those
were just some of my favorites. Cheddar cheese is used
in all kinds of things, mac and cheese, real cheese, cheddar, biscuits, cheddar, soup,
waffle skirts, apple pie. But I like it with apple
slices straight. Yeah, it's my favorite. If you're looking to
pair your cheddar cheese with a beverage, it's good with
ale and England. You can get this thing called a
(26:48):
plow and s lunch, which is sort of a platter
with cheddar, pickles, apple slices, bread and ale. Or a
good dry cabinet sagna would go well, also a dry slider.
There's lots of things cheese. It's cheese, I mean, and
she's scientifically has been proven to improve the taste of
so so wine. So so try any parent you like. Yeah, yeah,
(27:12):
and that is our first for cheese. There will be
many anymore. Oh yes, Oh, I'm so oh, I'm still
really really I'm real excited about it. Yeah, it's gonna
be great. That brings us to the end on this
classic episode on Cheddar Cheese. Uh. We hope that you
enjoyed it as much as we clearly loved talking about
(27:35):
it and researching it. If you like cheese, I hope
that you have some cheese in your future. Always, always, always,
And if you would like to email us, you can,
and we would love to hear from you. Our email
is hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on
social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
(27:55):
Instagram at savor pod um. And yes, we do hope
to hear from you. Um. Uh. We always hope that
there's cheese in your future, and we always hope to
hear from you. Uh. Savor is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts in my Heart Radio, you
can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always
to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to
(28:18):
you for listening, and we hope that lots more good
things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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