Читать книгу Cheddar Gorge: A Book of English Cheeses - John Squire - Страница 8

By Sir John Squire

Hotspur, in Shakespeare, exasperated by the timid, tedious, superstitious Glendower, exclaims of him:

I had rather live

With cheese and garlick in a windmill, far,

Than feed on cates and have him talk to me

In any summer house in Christendom.

Here, the hero, unlike Horace who was happy to write

Me pascunt olivae

Me cichorea levesque malvae1

appears to regard the Simple Life as merely the less unpleasant of two gross evils: though as concerns the one matter of garlic Horace would certainly agree with him, as is indicated in the third Epode where he laments ‘quid hoc veneni saevit in praecordiis’2 and prays that Maecenas, who had given it to him, should suffer the worst of fates if the offence were repeated. Mr. Belloc, perhaps, would more thoroughly accept what Hotspur contemned: he possesses a windmill and he has written notably about cheese and the eating of raw onions.

‘Lived in the wilderness twenty years together without any other meat?’

It is possible that one could live on that diet; Mr. Burdett in his Little Book of Cheese quotes the old Doctor Thomas Muffett:

Was not that a great cheese, think you, wherewith Zoroaster lived in the wilderness twenty years together without any other Meat?

and calculates that the cheese, to last, must have weighed a ton and a half. Remembering the widow’s cruse of the other Prophet, it may be that Zoroaster had technical resources which obviated the necessity of so great a bulk. But supposing a man were to wish to live on cheese alone, and that it were possible, there is no cheese in the world so nourishing and so little likely to pall as Stilton. Everybody who has ever entertained a Stilton must remember the sigh of sorrow which goes up when the last of it has been eaten or has become inedibly dry.

It is the King of Cheeses, if all the qualities of cheese are taken into account: that a cheese should be not only a ‘thing in itself’3 (to use the phrase of German philosophers who thought that green cheese was what the moon was made of) and as the perfect rounding off of a meal – the sunset of it, caseus et praeterea nihil4 – but as, at need, a meal in itself. There are excellent cheeses which can agreeably be daubed on the remains of a roll at the end of luncheon, without adding noticeably to the amount consumed; and some of them are hardly distinguishable from the butter with which they are usually taken. But the best of the creamy and semi-liquid kinds need accessories, can only be eaten in small quantities, and cannot be conceived of as staples of life. One cannot imagine Zoroaster, whatever his magic antidotes against time and clime, spending twenty years of solitude in the unmitigated company of a mound of ‘Cream’ or of Camembert – before a day was out he would have been thinking more of the Camembert’s crust or even the other’s silver paper as something approximating to solid food than he would have thought of the softness within. On the other hand there are solid, leathery or rubbery cheeses which are undoubtedly edible in quantities on occasion but which are either so tame or so peculiar that they would become rapidly wearisome. And, again, there are sturdy cheeses so pungent and even stinging that a little of them taken ‘neat’ must go a long way. Ripe Stilton, as an unaccompanied iron ration, would excel them all. And, as the conclusion of a meal, it should always be regarded as a full-sized course in itself, and not as a trimming; and thought should be taken beforehand accordingly. To begin a meal with hors d’œuvres which is going to end with Stilton is not to whet but to waste the appetite – olives I don’t count.

When Stilton began it is evident no man knows. The process of making it was doubtless a gradual growth. A recent correspondence in The Times showed an almost acrimonious difference of opinion as to where the credit of its invention lies. Had it not been for the fact that the French have recently erected a statue to Madame Harel, the inventress of Camembert, people would hardly have expected a precise name and date; many writers consoled themselves with the reflection that they know where and when and by whom it was first put upon the general market. In the eighteenth century it is reputed to have been made at Quenby Hall, in Leicestershire, and to have been known there as Lady Beaumont’s cheese, or, as some say, Mrs. Ashby’s; and, after, the Quenby housekeeper is said to have married a farmer at Dalby, whence, via a daughter, Mrs. Paulet, it reached Stilton, where it was sold at the Bell by Cooper Thornhill, Mrs. Paulet’s kinsman. This is the generally accepted story and it is certain that from the late eighteenth century onwards it was customarily sold outside the Bell to coach-passengers and others going along the Great North Road. No more suitable market-place (though it be not its birthplace) could have been devised for it than the village of Stilton and the Bell Inn. Even the ‘fumum et opes strepitumque’5 of the Great North Road today has not destroyed the peace of that wide old village street with its long stone Tudor inn with the great hanging gold sign of the Bell; and the local market, which presumably was killed by the temporary desertion of the roads during the railway era, might well be revived now. But the theory that, in the words of Mr. Osbert Burdett, ‘it was first sold in the last decade of the eighteenth century by its inventor’s (Mrs. Paulet) kinsman’ can be killed by a couplet. Both the cheese and the name for it go back at least two generations farther. In Pope’s Imitations of Horace appear these lines in the course of a reference to Prior’s story of the town mouse and the country mouse:

Cheese, such as men in Suffolk make,

But wish’d it Stilton for his sake.

This takes Stilton, so-named, back to George II.’s days; not only that, but it holds it up as the ne plus ultra of cheeses as contrasted to the lumpish stuff from Suffolk. And further, since Pope referred to it, who seldom moved from Twickenham and the south, it is at least probable that Stilton was at that time on sale in London, and well known there. Research might well produce earlier allusions. If readers will produce such they will be incorporated in later editions.6 Mrs. Paulet, however, would not have got her reputation for nothing; and she deserves her statue for having put Stilton ‘on the map’ as nobody before her seems to have done.

The ‘Bell’ at Stilton.

Stilton holds its own. Cheddar and Cheshire are in difficulties, though they may struggle back. When those of us who are now in middle life were young these were the stock English cheeses in all English households and inns. If you stopped, on a summer walk, for luncheon at the Cross Keys or the Mariner’s Rest you had a pint of bitter, English Cheddar (probably) or Cheshire (possibly) and newish bread with inviting crust: today you are usually fobbed off with so-called Cheddar, like mild soap, from across the Atlantic, or so-called Cheshire, like clay coloured with marigolds, also from across the Atlantic. The rage for cheapness is one cause. The scandalous lack of protection for English commodity-names (why should a thing be sold as Cheddar when it isn’t?) is another. The invention of the bicycle is another; when one was young the ordinary labourer had his meal of bread and good cheese and good beer or cider out of a stone jar under the hedge, whereas today he rides back to his cottage and is given by his wife salmon or corned beef out of a tin. Stilton, however, was rather a luxury; the rich like it; it is just possible that there would be a row if bogus Stilton were put upon the market after the fashion of bogus Gorgonzola; and in any event no plausible substitute for it, inferior or otherwise, has been invented. The sales of Stilton in recent years have increased; and if, as seems likely, more attention in the near future is devoted to food and drink (middle-class Puritanism with its gross feeding and its hatred of refinement being on the wane) they are likely to increase.

‘Had his meal of bread and good cheese and good beer … under the hedge.’

Demand is not likely to outrun supply. The character of Stilton is determined by the milk of which it is made, and that upon the grass which the cows eat, and that upon the soil; and Stilton is not one of those products like genuine Chianti or Imperial Tokay which are only themselves if they come from a particular patch of a few acres. The pastures on which it thrives are widespread in Huntingdonshire, Notts, Leicestershire and Rutland; and some first-class Stiltons nowadays come from Derbyshire – which also, like Leicestershire, has its own peculiar cheese, though little of it is now made. As with all cheeses of wide consumption the manufacture of Stilton is now largely carried on in company-owned factories, though there are still flourishing dairies whose owners carry on with their own milk and that of neighbouring farmers. The cheeses of these latter are often among the best: for that matter there are old village wives who can make magnificent cheeses by rule of thumb or no apparent rule while scientifically trained girls freshly armed from college with thermometers, percentages and other gadgets may fail hopelessly – cheese-making is an art rather than a science.

Making Stilton cheese.

The summer and early autumn months are the best season for making cheese, Stilton included. In those months the milk is naturally richest; later the grass wanes (winter foods – cotton-cake and such – are no adequate substitute) and then come the frosts. The cheeses take anything up to six months to ripen; it follows that the best time for eating them runs roughly from November to April. I made this statement in print once, and a man wrote to tell me that he had once had perfect Stilton on a hot August day in a Great Western Railway restaurant – perhaps that Lucullan paradise which has delighted so many gourmets in the station at Bristol. He was, he admitted, bewildered, and asked how the miracle had been achieved. The answer was a refrigerator. It sounds very odd to me. Anyhow I should no more want Stilton on a hot August day than I should want boiled silverside and dumplings; Stilton is essentially a thing for the cold months, when appetites are robust and in want of warming up: and nothing is as good out of season as in, even if you can get it.

The old method of starting fermentation was to mix the morning’s milk with the previous evening’s which had acquired a slight tincture of sourness. To-day a ‘starter’ is universally used in the form of lactic acid bacteria procured from the Ministry of Agriculture. The milk is heated to a required temperature and then rennet is added, which separates the curd from the whey. The curd is strained off, salt is added, and the mixture is put into a wooden frame, of a Stilton’s familiar shape and size, in which, aided by frequent turning, it gets rid of more whey. After a week or so it is put into a cloth wrapping which absorbs more moisture; after another week or so, the surface being now quite dry, the young Stilton emerges. Another week in coolness and damp and its characteristic grey rind is formed. Now, about a month after the beginning of the making the slow process of maturing sets in, which may take six months.

If it is allowed to be completed, that is. Large-scale manufacturers and retailers alike, because of the expense of cellarage and the desire for a quick turn-over, are delighted to get rid of their cheese as early as they can; and a great deal of Stilton, not to mention other cheeses, is eaten when it is much too young. It is the commonest thing to be offered in hostelries and chop-houses Stilton which is still hard, white, chalky and, to the taste, rather acid, and one frequently hears waiters warning their favourite customers that ‘the Stilton is not quite ripe yet, sir’ – as though there were any sense in cutting it before it is ripe. But what the temptations to retailers are, what the difficulties of very small and very busy dealers, what the care, labour and expense involved in the perfect nursing and marketing of Stilton may easily be realised by any one who goes over the vaults of a great and scrupulous cheesemonger.

I may take, as an instance, Messrs. Fortnum and Mason, whose sales of Stilton are very large, as befits such notable specialists in English cheeses in general. The privileged visitor is taken underground by a lift and finds himself in a series of beautifully clean cellars (blue-washed because flies do not like blue) full of cheeses and sides and hams – cellars are necessary for the storage of cheeses as they will mature properly only in darkness and an even cool temperature. Various rooms are crossed, one’s guide turning on switches as he goes, until at last one reaches the Stiltons which, as befits their dignity, have a chapel to themselves, full of shelves and turning implements. There they stand in rows, scores of them, some in cloths, some unbound. Every other day they are turned in order that the curd should retain an even consistency, and every single day they are brushed in order to keep them clear of mites – for these creatures bore inwards and are not, as people think, spontaneously generated by cheese any more than (pace Shakespeare) the sun actually breeds maggots. The job is one in which a man should take as much pride as a groundsman takes in his wicket at Lord’s.

He who purchases cheese from an establishment like that may be certain that he will get something ready for eating: though even among the customers of the best retailers there is some difference of taste regarding the prime of cheeses, and there are even people so eccentric, or so uneducated, that they actually prefer Stilton immature, chalky and sour. These may find what they want anywhere; they may even buy it in flat segments in London bars. But for the purchaser in general, who goes to a local shop which stocks Stilton and likes to see it for himself or herself, this much may be said. The cheese should be creamy, not white; the blue mould should be well distributed; and cracks should not be conspicuous. A little brown around the edges is normal when the cheese is mature; patches of brown elsewhere mean imperfect grass. Tasting is always advisable; the cheese-trier leaves little trace behind it.

A Stilton should be cut before it is over-ripe; it should be finished before it is dry. The custom is now common of slicing it horizontally so as to expose the least possible extent of surface to drying. This way the last of the cheese will be moister; but nobody will ever get the heart of the cheese as one gets it from the middle with a scoop, which latter in the end leaves one with a desiccated husk. Each must choose for himself; in any event a cheese will not go bone-dry if you eat it fast enough.

And why not do so? More than one reason is advanced as to why the modern small household shrinks from Stilton: and it is certainly true that the presence of a Stilton in a very bijou flat may make itself disagreeably felt, particularly if the weather turns warm. But there is no reason why a household of even two should (though, unassisted, they will hardly dispose of a whole Stilton before it dries) cope with a half Stilton in the period between its prime and its decay – in fact I have had recent proof of this – provided it is regarded as something more than a trimming. And it should be eaten nearly mature.

There are cheeses so mild that they need help; cheeses so strong that they need toning down. I have seen in commercial hotels people chopping up Canadian ‘Cheddar’ and adding Yorkshire Relish to it; and it is common and pardonable for men who are eating the powerful produce of Gorgonzola to mitigate it with cucumber or raw tomato in addition to butter. But mature Stilton needs neither modification nor mollification. The delicacy of crisp celery is permissible with it, particularly if one is making a breakfast of it. But butter does not help it; it has salt enough of its own; and all that it needs for accompaniment is bread, not too stale.

It is an insult to this cheese to buy or sell it by the pound. It is not a compliment to buy or sell portions of it in little jars. The best merchants know this; they merely shrug their shoulders and say that the demand must be met by the supply. The only hope therefore is that of educating the public taste which, in the last fifty years, has been steadily vitiated through a number of obvious causes. And if we can only cultivate an appreciation of and belief in our own cheeses we may recover some of those which we have lost and even lead foreigners to respect them. It is impossible to travel in France without encountering a great diversity of local cheeses as well as those of general fame, from Normandy to Alsace and so to the South, and in varying degrees this is true of all Western countries, Spain being perhaps the most deficient. Some of the most delightful foreign cheeses – including the finest of the soft Swiss ones – will not travel. But we may be fairly sure that any really good and keepable foreign cheese has its chances in England, and it is likely that in the best London clubs and hotels there is more cheese from France alone – Roquefort, Port Salut, Camembert and Brie – annually consumed than there is of all the English cheeses put together. Variety is a good thing and a good cheese is welcome from whencesoever it comes: few of us would wish to be Zoroaster. But it is scandalous that every British household should be familiar with, say, Edam (the round Dutch redskins) but that hardly anybody on the Continent has ever heard of any English cheese at all.

A little Stilton used to be exported to Germany; beyond that I do not know that any English cheese has ever gone abroad in noticeable quantities excepting only Cheshire, which is widely known as Chester. I was first apprised of this before the War by a Hungarian friend. He was telling me that he had been attending a debate of the Hungarian Parliament. A deputy had begun a sentence with ‘As the English writer Chesterton says …’ when he was fiercely interrupted by a colleague who leapt up and shouted: ‘Chesterton is a cheese!’ If our agricultural industry were not so depressed and the Ministry of Agriculture were able to be as active in promoting the export of English cheese as its sister department is in importing foreign dairy products in exchange for coal, the world, which does not know as yet that we have great painters, might at least learn that we have great cheeses. Stilton, at least, should be obtainable in every good hotel in Northern and Central Europe and, before it can be obtainable, its virtues must be made widely known by propaganda amongst foreigners. Tens of thousands of them swarm into London every year. How many of them, at the ‘Magnifique’ and the ‘Superbe’, are ever pressed to attempt Stilton? Why, half the waiters have never heard of it!

Throughout the nineteenth century British authors paid frequent tribute to Stilton, though there are always those who prefer to show their connoisseurship by mentioning something outlandish. In Jane Austen’s Emma there is a reference to Stilton. Emma, out for a walk, had hung behind Harriet and Mr. Elton in the hope of giving them a chance of tender passages. At last they looked round and she was obliged to join them:

Mr. Elton was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail; and Emma experienced some disappointment when she found that he was only giving his fair companion an account of yesterday’s party at his friend Cole’s, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese, and the North Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beetroot, and all the dessert.

‘This would soon have led to something better, of course,’ was her consoling reflection, ‘anything interests between those who love; and anything will serve as an introduction to what is near the heart.’

But it may be that Harriet, who had already been described as not clever, did not respond to the Stilton; which may explain why the course of this love did not run smooth, or even at all. Mary Lamb was very fond of Stilton and there is a letter in which Charles thanks Thomas Allsop for sending them ‘the best I ever tasted … the delicatest, rainbow-hued, melting piece I ever flavoured’. Stilton ought to have been mentioned in Handley Cross, and I thought it was. Looking back I can find only references to ‘chopped cheese’ (toasted?) at the Hunt Dinner and the cheese ‘strong, soft and leathery’ to which Mr. Jorrocks helped himself too greedily at that awful repast at the Muleygrubs. Elsewhere he is recorded as having written: ‘P.S.2. Tell Fortnum and Mazon to send me dozen pots of marmeylad’, so his knowledge of the right cheese must be assumed.

As to what is to be drunk with Stilton is a matter of taste, a matter also of what one has eaten and drunk before it has been reached. There are those who eat liquor with it, as it were, pouring port or beer upon it after it has gone dry. Moistening no doubt: but the Stilton may still cry ‘Non sum qualis eram.’7 Beer or burgundy, to my thinking; but better still, water, and whatever you like afterwards.