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