German cheese versus British cheese

At my last nature drawing class before Christmas, there was a woman there who usually attends the watercolour class on Mondays (our teacher says if you can't make one class one week, you can visit the other class instead). She was a bit of an arrogant cow, pretty, but snooty. 

"Is there any food from the UK that you miss?" she asked, slyly, as though to imply that there couldn't possibly be any food you could miss since everyone know how bad British food is, right?

"Well," I said. "I could murder a kipper sometimes, and there are some cheeses."

"Oh, you mean Cheddar," she retorted, with a sneer on her pretty face.

Oh, dear, folks. Just because you've heard of Cheddar that doesn't mean that the UK only has Cheddar. On the other hand, at least the UK has one cheese that most Germans can name. Tell me - which German cheese has made it onto the world market? Emmentaler and Gruyere are Swiss.

When you go to a German supermarket, you'll find that most cheeses on display in the chilled section are yellow - and sliced. What is it with the Germans wanting sliced cheese all the time? And always yellow: Tilsit cheese, Butterkäse (butter cheese), the ubiquitous Gouda, occasionally Edam. And 9 times out of 10, any Cheddar available will also be sliced.

However, you'll notice one difference between the yellow cheese slices and the Cheddar slices: the Cheddar slices are smaller (and square). This is because it's a cheese that's been matured for a few months. Butterkäse, in contrast, is matured for a month! And all those rectangular cheese slices have one thing in common: you can roll them up. Try that with Cheddar - or even a slice of Gouda that's been allowed to mature for a good few months.

Now, back in the early 80s, Francois Mitterand, President of France at the time, became famous for saying, in despair, "How can you govern a country with 238 varieties of cheese?"

Two hundred and thirty-eight varieties of cheese? That ain't that many. Did you know that, according to the British Cheese Board (now part of Dairy UK), the UK has over 700 named varieties of cheese? SEVEN HUNDRED PLUS.

Some that I can remember from my childhood... Red Leicester (pronounced: lester), Double Gloucester (pronounced: gloster), Stilton (most popular at Christmas time), Wensleydale (pronounced: wens-lee-dayl), Shropshire ('schrop-scha'), Caerphilly ('kair-filly), Derby ('dar-bee') and Sage Derby (with sage [Salbei], a herb, in it) and Cheshire (very crumbly and is great grilled on toast). And those are just off the top of my head.

So the poor Germans are missing out on a lot of flavour by just importing Cheddar, but when you consider how plastic-like, yellow and bland the most popular, 'rollable' cheeses (e.g. bland Butterkäse or 'young' Gouda) are, then it's no wonder they don't.

And here's a suggestion for your next cheese and wine party:

https://ainttooproudtomeg.com/a-very-english-cheese-board/