Share
England has a very old history of manufacturing cheese. English Heritage claims that dairy processing was practised in ancient Britain as early as 3800 B.C. Later, the Romans brought sophisticated methods of cheesemaking and extensive sheep farming to the British Isles. British monks continued to perfect the craft of manufacturing cheese during the Middle Ages under the influence of French monks who traded methods across global networks of monastic communities.
During World War II, British cheesemaking as a craft was lost. In accordance with wartime rationing, government agencies restricted the types of cheeses, putting a greater emphasis on nutritional value than taste. Following the war, British cheese production continued to plummet, with the number of farms manufacturing cheddar cheese falling from 333 in 1939 to just 33 in 1974. However, a small group of passionate domestic cheesemakers began to attempt to resurrect old methods in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They had enormous success: According to cheesemonger Ned Palmer, Britain saw "the great cheese renaissance of the 1980s." Currently, the sector is thriving and British cheeses are well-liked around the world.
Cheesemakers started recreating long-forgotten cheeses as a result of an interest in the old recipes that contributed to the U.K.'s cheese renaissance in the 1980s. Cornish Yarg is one of these cheeses; it is defined as a semi-hard cheese with a mushroom flavour that is creamy behind the rind yet crumbly inside. The Cornish Yarg is based on an old recipe that called for a cheese to be matured while being covered with stinging nettle leaves. The nettles also act as an enzyme and contribute to the formation of the cheese's characteristic mushroom flavour.
The basic recipe was discovered in the 1980s by a farmer named Alan Gray in a copy of "The English Huswife," a cookbook from the 17th century, that he had retrieved from his attic. Gray started experimenting with the ambiguous formula and was pleased with the outcomes. He called the cheese "yarg," his own name spelled backward, as the recipe lacked a name. However, health officials forbade Gray from selling his innovation because he lacked the necessary tools. He sold the recipe to a different dairy farmer, who engaged Catherine Mead, a renowned cheesemaker, to help further refine Gray's recipe.
According to descriptions, Cornish Yarg cheese is a low-fat, mild to medium-strong cheese manufactured with pasteurised cows' milk (from the dairies' Ayreshire, Jersey, and Friesian herds) and conventional animal rennet. It has received numerous Gold honours and was named the Best English Cheese at the 2012 International Cheese Show.The Cornish Yarg Cheese has a distinct taste in contrast to many other creamy, crumbly semi-hard cheeses because it is traditionally wrapped in concentric circles of nettle leaves before maturing for five weeks. This technique results in an edible, mouldy rind that gives the cheese a faintly mushroom flavour.
