Setting the Cheese Record Straight

The UK village of Stilton no longer is blue about its days of dairy yore.

The village in Cambridgeshire – west of London – finally can lay claim to being the original producers of the blue-veined cheese that bears the town’s name.

Local historian Richard Landy found that the town of Stilton was mentioned in a 1722 letter containing the original pressed, cooked cheese recipe.

Despite the dairy product being sold in the village for hundreds of years, records suggested the cheese was first made in 1740 in the town of Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire (north of London). At least, that’s what the Stilton Cheese Makers Association (SCMA) once ruled.

But the association admitted its mistake when Landy presented them with the letter, which described a delicious cheese made and sold by Stilton pub landlord Cooper Thornhill.

The town celebrated Monday with cheese, of course, and a plaque naming Thornhill’s 16th century Bell Inn pub as "the birthplace of Stilton."

One million Stiltons -- now an unpressed and semi-hard blue-veined cheese -- are produced each year by six dairies with the license to do so. Stilton is the UK's most popular blue cheese. 

"It is nice to have confirmation that Stilton is now the village that created the cheese," Landy told the UK’s Peterborough Today. "It has taken a long time and a lot of research to get this result, but it now means Stilton is firmly on the map, and the cheese map."

With the SCMA confirming the town’s rightful heritage on the BBC’s "The Food Programme," Stilton is now talking about holding an annual festival for its favorite big cheese.

Nothing like milking the news for all it’s worth.

Photo courtesy Poppins' Garden via Flickr.