History of Stilton –
how it all came about.
“Like
so many types of food and commodities, Stilton developed – it was not invented,
it did not appear overnight. Today each
of the six dairies producing Stilton cheese uses its own recipe – not one dairy
produces Stilton cheese in exactly the same way as its competitors.”
In the book by Trevor Hickman “The History of Stilton
Cheese”1995, Trevor explains that a cream cheese was being made in the parish
of Wymondham, Leicestershire. Many
individuals living in farming communities in this area would make cheese from
their surplus milk. When it was offered
for sale, it would have been given a variety of names. However, a blue veined cream cheese made from
cows’ milk was produced by farmers in Wymondham as soon as pastures were
enclosed within the open-field system in the 18th Century.
Undoubtedly the cheese we now recognize as Stilton was
developed because of increased demand, most probably as a result of the
development of road links throughout the country. The most important highway to be developed
was the Great North Road on which the town of Stilton had been a stopping point
for centuries for travellers. With the
development of the coaching trade, not only was cheese carried on journeys to
be eaten but also purchased for retail and consumption in the towns and cities
that were the eventual destinations of the travellers. So ‘the cheese of Stilton’ was created. Mrs Orton, (a farmer’s wife from Little Dalby) is claimed
to have made the first Stilton cheeses in Leicestershire in 1730.
Stilton cheese is unique; it has its own distinctive
taste and quality when it has reached maturity.
The size and shape of Stilton varied somewhat. It is possible that Mrs Frances Pawlett of
Wymondham, a cheese-maker of high repute, can be credited with applying the
standards of the day, rationalizing shape, size and quality.
Mrs Pawlett set a standard, producing her own cheese and
acting as “middleman”, and selected only the best of the other dairies’ cheeses
for delivery to Stilton. Many hostelries
in the small town competed to sell the cheese.
Legend has it that Cooper Thornhill, the owner of The Bell, in
association with Mrs Pawlett, sold the best cheese in the middle years of the
18th century. Until Cooper
Thornhill became involved, it was also very much a seasonal trade, only being
on offer when available. When the
arrival of the railways in the 1840s came, this altered the Stilton Cheese
industry immediately. The railway system
allowed more of the London aristocracy to visit Melton Mowbray in support of
the local hunts and once they had discovered this cheese, they promoted it to
an enormous extent. Railway wagons
filled with Stilton cheese for London on a weekly basis.
Until the building of specialized dairies at the end of
the 19th century, it was always very localized. Hundreds of farmers’ wives made Stilton with
their surplus milk, often producing only one or two per day. These would be sold in various markets
especially at fairs in Melton Mowbray. Eventually
co-operatives were formed and specialist dairies were built, including the
formation of Long Clawson Dairy in 1911 by Thomas Hoe Stevenson.
No comments:
Post a Comment