By Isla Quinn
Here is a good pub fact. It is also true.
Stilton cheese cannot be made in Stilton. The village lies in Cambridgeshire. The rules say the cheese must come from Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire.
The rule
Wikipedia says Stilton has protected designation of origin status, granted in 1996, and that it follows certification and trademark protection in 1966. It says both blue and white versions are protected. The three permitted counties are Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. A law firm’s blog on the subject says the protection was granted in 1996 when the Stilton Cheesemakers’ Association applied to the European Commission, that it carries over under UK law after Brexit, and that the rules require a minimum fat content of 48 per cent for both blue and white. It calls the situation one of those deliciously British contradictions, since the place that gave Stilton its name cannot legally produce it.
Why the village was left out
Wikipedia says an application to include the village was rejected in 2013. A trade-mark journal says the application came from a company that wanted to amend the protection to include the village, and quotes the chairman of the UK Protected Food Names Association as saying that the High Court trade mark grant of 1966 restricted production to the three counties “with the clear understanding that the village of Stilton would be permanently excluded.” That is one side’s account. We did not find the original ruling.
How it is made
The rules, as Wikipedia gives them, are specific. The cheese must be made from pasteurised milk. Wikipedia says it was originally made from raw milk, and that production switched to pasteurised in the late 1980s after a health scare. The blue comes from piercing the crust with stainless steel needles to let air into the core. The cheese is unpressed, forms its own crust and keeps a traditional cylindrical shape. It is aged for at least nine weeks, and the whole making takes nine to twelve weeks.
The inn on the road
Wikipedia says Cooper Thornhill’s inn stood on the Great North Road, a main stagecoach route between London and the north of England. It also says Daniel Defoe mentioned Stilton cheese in his 1724 book, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, and that the Stilton Cheesemakers’ Association was established in 1936. Put the three together and you get a cheese named for a place on a road, sold to travellers, then named in print, then organised into a trade body. Our reading is that the name came from the road trade and not from the dairies. No source we read states this, so it is our interpretation.
Who made it first?
The accepted story, as Wikipedia gives it, is that Frances Pawlett of Wymondham, Leicestershire, is traditionally credited with setting up the modern Stilton shape and style in the 1720s. It names Cooper Thornhill, who ran the Bell Inn at Stilton, as the first person to market blue Stilton, around 1730. A blog on British food puts the story slightly differently. It says Pawlett was a mid-eighteenth-century cheesemaker who supplied Thornhill and contracted neighbouring cheesemakers to use her recipe.
There is also a rival account. The same blog says a local historian found a 1722 recipe for a cheese called Stilton made in the village, which would predate Pawlett by 20 to 30 years. It adds that the Stilton Cheese Makers’ Association disputes the significance, saying that product would bear little resemblance to the blue cheese made today. The dates, then, run from 1720s to mid-century depending on who is counting, and we would not choose between them.
How many dairies
Wikipedia says that by September 2016 just six dairies were licensed to make Stilton, three in Leicestershire, two in Nottinghamshire and one in Derbyshire. The British food blog says seven licensed dairies make it, and together produce about a million wheels a year. The two sources are of different dates and different weight, so treat both as snapshots. We have not found a current count.
The plaque and the politics
The blog says the village has put up a plaque at the Bell Inn calling it the birthplace of Stilton cheese, and that after Brexit the local MP campaigned to allow the village to make the cheese. The trade-mark journal’s article, from February 2020, says the EU rules were due to stay in force at least until the end of the transition period. Our reading is that this is an argument about names more than about cheese. We have not checked what, if anything, has changed since.
The white one, and the neighbour
Wikipedia says White Stilton lacks the Penicillium roqueforti mould that makes the blue veining, and is used as a base for blending with apricot, ginger, citrus or vine fruits. It describes the blue as semi-soft and crumbly, creamier with age, and says it is traditionally eaten at Christmas.
It also names a cheese called Stichelton, an English blue that it calls virtually identical to Blue Stilton but which, because it does not use pasteurised milk, cannot legally be called Stilton. That is Wikipedia’s summary of the rule, and a good illustration of it. The name follows the counties and the milk, not the taste.
What the name does
A name like this carries two messages. It says where the cheese was made, and it says that someone checks. On the label, a protected name is a promise about the counties, the milk and the method. It is not a promise about the particular wheel in your hand. For that, the useful question is which dairy, and how long it was aged.
Roam first. Shop later.
Cheesemakers and makers of regional foods can find out what’s involved at /sell-with-sephari/