The Cheese That Bit Back

The young woman at the cheese counter was visibly in need of a vacation.

“I can help you!” she assured me, fervently and unasked, shooting with fevered eye from behind a display of hazelnut cranberry crackers. “You want cheese, you’ve come to the right place! We have cheeses here that’ll knock your socks off! We have big cheeses! We have small cheeses! We have French cheeses from France, we have goat cheeses from goats! You cannot name a cheese we do not have! Go ahead and try – name your cheese and I guarantee you we will have it! And that’s a guarantee!”

Photo by VIRUL on Unsplash

“What I’m looking for,” I explained, I would have thought unremarkably enough, after the wind had at last settled in my hair, “is a piece of English cheddar.”

The young woman’s head swiveled in delight.

“You want a sharp cheddar cheese!” she cried. “Sharp cheddar cheese, I’ll show you sharp cheddar cheese! We have a cheddar cheese so sharp it’ll bite you right back! Right back, I tell you! Come with me and I’ll show you sharp cheddar cheese!”

In fact, I was not looking for a sharp cheese. A good English cheddar, while certainly flavorful, is not particularly sharp at all: it’s mellow and deliciously nutty with a firm texture and a pleasing pale yellow color. It used to be difficult to find a good cheddar in American cheese stores, but these days, with improved transportation techniques, many companies are importing them with some success; and if you can find a piece of good English cheddar in peak condition, it is a treat worthy of the gods.

My new friend was glaring at me in some irritation.

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded. “I need to show you my cheese! You want sharp cheddar, I tell you, this one is so sharp it’ll bite you right back!”

Obediently, I followed her to a section of refrigerator in a corner, in which lay a perspiring rectangle of what looked like a portion of foot severed from a newly-discovered corpse, encased in plastic that proudly announced its provenance to be the fair American state of Vermont.

“Now that,” cried the assistant in triumph, “is a traditional cheddar cheese!”

Now, I will be polite up to a point, but there does come a time when facts must be served.

“You see,” I felt impelled to point out, “actually, it’s not.”

There was a pause while the assistant absorbed this

“It is, you know,” she said, then.

“It might be a cheddar,” I allowed. “But what I’m looking for is an English cheddar. And that’s not it.”

Unlike champagne or Parmigiano Reggiano, cheddar cheese has no Protected Designation of Origin, and thus can theoretically be made anywhere. But it is well documented that the most authentic form of English cheddar cheese – and to my personal palate the tastiest – is made from the milk of cows in the West Country of England, the nearer the better to the little town of Cheddar in Somerset, where it is matured in the caves of the adjoining Cheddar Gorge.

The assistant’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Ma’am,” she said. “I assure you that this is the sharpest cheddar that you will find anywhere. It’s from Vermont, and once you try it, it’ll bite you back, I tell you.” She nodded, firmly, at the amputated foot portion. “Bite you,” she repeated lest there was a danger I had misunderstood her until now. “Right. Back.”

“I’m sure it’s a sharp cheddar cheese,” I agreed. “But what I’m looking for is a piece of English cheddar cheese. Which actually isn’t particularly sharp at all, but more full and, well, cheddary.”

The assistant puffed her cheeks in frustration.

“Ma’am,” she affirmed. “This is the sharpest English cheddar we have. It’s from Vermont! It’ll bite you right back!”

It’s not that I have anything against Vermont cheeses per se. They have excellent animal livestock in Vermont and, the specimen currently in front of me apart, there are fine cheeses to be made from their milk. But, since Vermont is generally agreed be in America, as opposed to, for instance, England, not even the finest of Vermont cheeses can be accurately described as an English cheese.

“I believe you wholeheartedly,” I told her. “But as you’ve just said, this cheddar cheese is from Vermont; and as I’ve just said, the sort of cheese I’m looking for is English cheddar. From England.”

The assistant’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m not getting what you’re telling me.”

I decided to take it from the top.

“This cheddar,” I said, speaking slowly and gently, pointing to the amputated foot portion with clarity and without hint of blame, “was made in America. I’m looking for a cheddar that was made in England.”

The assistant pondered and at last her brow cleared as it all became plain to her.

“Oh!” she cried. “You mean you want a Lye-ster cheddar! Why didn’t you say so?”

Now, the county of Leicestershire is a particularly pretty one. Set in the verdant center of England’s pleasant land, it offers the visitor grassy lanes, thatched cottages, and, poignantly, the home of poor little Lady Jane Grey, the teenaged political pawn who reigned as Queen for precisely nine days in 1553 before being deposed and beheaded for treason; in the grounds of her now-ruined house, the oak trees to this day are cropped at the top in her memory.

What Leicestershire does not offer is the Cheddar Gorge, which lies somewhat 150 miles to its southwest; and the cheese it produces, while quite delicious when topped with a spoonful of mango chutney and served on an oatcake, is reddish-orange in color, crumbly in texture, and in taste could hardly be more different from cheddar cheese if you marked it with chalk.

It is also pronounced Lester.

“It’s pronounced Lester,” I said.

The assistant rolled her eyes just a little.

“Lye-ster,” she corrected me, wearily.

It is a long-established English hobby to argue about the pronunciation of words. Some people, for instance, call the lightly sweetened tea biscuit a scone and others a sconn. Some people lie awake at nights worrying, should they chance to run into Queen Camilla on the 44 bus to Battersea, whether they should address her as Ma’am or Mah’m. Apparently, to refer to a portion of one’s home as a “room” instead of a “r’m” is a dead giveaway of a less than exalted social origin; and I have a friend who comes over all Lady Bracknell should one prove oneself so plebeian as to propose meeting him outside London’s Charring Cross station in place of the more aristocratically announced Chairing Cross.

There is only one way to pronounce Leicester.

“Actually,” I said, “it really is Lester.”

The assistant sighed and shook her head.

“Here we go again!” she said. “I get this from both sides. Half of English people say Lester, and the other half say Lye-ster.”

There are around 58.6 million people currently living in England. Of them, and their parents, and their great-great-grandparents all the way back to the Domesday Book, not a solitary one has ever said Lye-ster.

But the assistant was on a roll.

“And both sides,” she continued, beginning to gnaw on the inside of her cheek, “are just so sure that they’re the ones who are right and the others are the ones who are wrong. And there’s no talking to either of them because their minds are already made up.”

I remained bereft of a response.

The assistant turned on me a brow dark with foreboding.

“And you guys need to figure a way to settle it,” she warned me sternly. “Because you can’t go on arguing about things like this, it’s how wars get started.”

She thought, and her eyes widened.

“Wars,” she repeated. “Wars, OK? And I don’t think you want a war, do you, just over how you say Lye-ster? Start killing each other over how you guys pronounce a name? That would be crazy, even for you Brits.”

She spun around, and took a few calming breaths in the direction of the fig jam. Then turned back, revivified.

“We can do this!” she cried. “We’ll find you a cheese that will knock your socks off, I guarantee! Now, if you don’t want a sharp cheddar and you don’t want a Lye-ster cheddar, the next cheddar we could try would be …”

In the corner of the case, I spotted a portion of blessedly neutral Swiss Gruyère, blamelessly wrapped, and clearly marked as to weight and price.

“Do you know something?” I said. “I think I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll get this instead.”

Slowly and delicately, I picked it up and backed away towards the cash register, careful to do nothing to startle or offend.