Swaledale is a full fat

hard Hard may refer to: * Hardness, resistance of physical materials to deformation or fracture * Hard water, water with high mineral content Arts and entertainment * ''Hard'' (TV series), a French TV series * Hard (band), a Hungarian hard rock supe ...

cheese produced in the town of Richmond in

Swaledale Swaledale is one of the northernmost dales (valleys) in Yorkshire Dales National Park, located in northern England. It is the dale of the River Swale on the east side of the Pennines in North Yorkshire. Geographical overview Swaledale runs ...

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is the largest ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county (lieutenancy area) in England, covering an area of . Around 40% of the county is covered by National parks of the United Kingdom, national parks, including most of ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The cheese is produced from cows’

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digest solid food. Immune factors and immune-modula ...

, Swaledale sheep's milk and

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...

s’ milk.

Description

The cheeses are round in shape with an average weight for the cheese wheel of and are made with unpasteurised milk. The animals whose milk is used to make Swaledale cheese, all graze on land in

which makes their milk characteristic of the area as a particular mixture of herbs and grasses grow there due to its soil and climate and this give the cheese distinctive properties. The cheese has a moist medium firm texture and its flavour is described as having “the freshness of the misty Dales and wild bracken, with the sweet caramel undertone of ewes’ milk”.

Production

Swaledale cheese is handmade to a recipe from Swaledale, the knowledge of which is limited to a few people. Milk from farms in Swaledale is collected and, in the first stage of the cheesemaking process, heated to with microbiological culture. After being left for two hours rennet is added to the milk. The mixture is then left to curdle for an hour after which time the resulting curd is heated to 28 °C, cut up and stirred. It is then cut up again, drained and the resulting cubes stacked up, before the blocks are broken up and then put into moulds lined with

muslin Muslin () is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq, where it was first manufactured. Muslin of uncommonly delicate hands ...

. The moulds are then lightly pressed during storage at 28 °C for 18 hours, and are turned once after four hours. Once the cheese has finished being pressed it is removed from the moulds and is soaked in a

solution Solution may refer to: * Solution (chemistry), a mixture where one substance is dissolved in another * Solution (equation), in mathematics ** Numerical solution, in numerical analysis, approximate solutions within specified error bounds * Soluti ...

of 85% brine for 24 hours. After being made Swaledale cheese is stored in humid cellars. While the cheese is maturing, if it is not covered in natural wax, a grey-blue mould grows on its rind. The cheese takes between three and four weeks to mature.

History

Legend A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess ...

s about the

Yorkshire Dales The Yorkshire Dales is an upland area of the Pennines in the historic county of Yorkshire, England, most of it in the Yorkshire Dales National Park created in 1954. The Dales comprise river valleys and the hills rising from the Vale of York w ...

, the area that includes Swaledale, say the origin of cheese making lie with Cistercian monks from Normandy who settled in the area in the 11th century. Their techniques were passed on to local farmers in Swaledale who continued to produce cheese, although the monks left during the dissolution of the monasteries. In 18th century cheese was produced at farmhouses within Swaledale and sold fresh with a white colour or ripe once they had developed a blue colouration. These cheeses' high moisture content and open texture allowed them to blue easily when they were matured in damp conditions.

Cheesemaking Cheesemaking (or caseiculture) is the craft of making cheese. The production of cheese, like many other food preservation processes, allows the nutritional and economic value of a food material, in this case milk, to be preserved in concentr ...

started to decline in Swaledale at the start of the 20th century and by 1980 only one farm in Swaledale, Harkerside above

Reeth Reeth is a village west of Richmond in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England, in the civil parish of Reeth, Fremington and Healaugh. Historically part of the North Riding of Yorkshire, it is the principal settlement of upp ...

, was still making cheese. In the early 1980s this cheese stopped being produced as well, until Mrs Longstaff gave the original recipe for Swaledale cheese to David and Mandy Reed who founded the Swaledale Cheese company in February 1987 to produce the cheese.

Awards

In 1995 Swaledale Cheese and Swaledale Ewes Cheese were awarded European protected designation of origin (PDO) status. Swaledale cheeses have won a number of awards including three gold awards at the 2008 Great Taste Awards and three gold and two bronze medals at 2008 World Cheese Awards.

References

External links