Wensleydale Cheese

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Wensleydale Cheese is a white, moist, crumbly cheese with an uneven surface somewhat like Caerphilly. It has a clean tang behind its mild taste.

Eight pints of milk (4.5 litres) are needed to make a pound (450g) of the Wensleydale. It is made from pasteurized cow's milk, though some dairies are now blending in sheep's milk or making it entirely from sheep's milk, as it used to be made. When made with sheep's milk, the cheese will come out even whiter. The milk is curdled with vegetarian rennet, then the curd is placed into moulds, then pressed.

It is generally aged for about a month, but can be aged anywhere from 2 to 4 months.

Sometimes it is sealed in wax to keep the moisture in.

Cooking Tips
Wensleydale is good with gingerbread, with fresh fruit such as apples, or with desserts such as apple pie or fruitcake. It melts very well in cooking.

Nutrition
Wensleydale has a fat content of 45%.

History
French Cistercian monks (the same order of monks as that of Port du Salut cheese fame) came to Yorkshire from the Roquefort area of France around 1150, after the Norman conquest of England. At the time, the Cistercians were setting up satellite abbeys everywhere (they also established Esrom at this time).

They built a monastery in Wensleydale. They started making cheese from sheep's milk. The switch to cow's milk started in the 1300s, and accelerated at end of 1500s, when monasteries were dissolved, and production moved from the monasteries to farms. (The Wensleydale monastery was dissolved in 1540.)

Wensleydale was originally a blue cheese, based on their knowledge of cheesemaking from Roquefort. It was a very soft blue cheese.

No white Wensleydale was made until during the Industrial Revolution. Even so, up until the 1920s, just saying "Wensleydale" meant the Blue Wensleydale. Now, white is better known and the Blue considered the novelty cheese.

Commercial production of Wensleydale was forbidden from 1939 until 1954 under rationing in Britain. Then, the British Milk Marketing Board almost succeeded in squashing the Wensleydale cheesemakers struggling to come back to life. Only one small Wensleydale cheesemaker didn't give up, called "Wensleydale Creamery". They kept the cheese alive and others have since taken up the cause as well. While Wensleydale now thrives, the Milk Marketing Board has been abolished.

Literature & Lore
Customer: Uuuuuh, Wensleydale.
Owner: Yes?
Customer: Ah, well, I'll have some of that!
Owner: Oh! I thought you were talking to me, sir. Mister Wensleydale, that's my name.
-- Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch, 1972

Language Notes
Wensleydale is in the Yorkshire Dales, a few miles to the northwest of the city of York.

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