WOMEN AND CHEESE.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 269, 3 January 1929, Page 4

WOMEN AND CHEESE.

Women have never been jegarded as connoisseurs of cheese ; indeed, there was a ckilicate section of Victorian society which regarded cheese as “not quite nice for ladies ’’ Like the wine, th e cheese was in the ordering hands of the mistress but the master of tue household, who responded with alacrity to .the confidential note from his own particular cheesemonger that something peeuiiariy ,-ich and full flavoured, had just been secured and was awaiting the privilege of being tasted. Cheesemongers went long ago, and now cheese—real cheese—is going too. Women have always cultivated cheeses made from a recipe of meekness and mildness, and after deriding their taste men are at last sharing it. Even at bachelor suppers Stilton is no longer called for. Feminine little morsels in silver paper are sufficiently tXequate for the cheese course—which can bo dispensed with altogether without much regret. What would Brihatbavarin think of our modern decadent taste? To him a meal without cheese was like a beautiful woman who lacked an eye. ‘ .? ut , ™ omen love custom and it is difficult to believe that housewives will give up buying at least a quarter ot a Stilton when Christmas comes round. Even in its palmiest days no on e suggested that a monument should be erected to the inventor of Stilton as one has recently been dedicated in .Normandy to the honour of th e dairymaid to whom Gniyere owes its originIf such a statue were raised, it would be at Langar, in Leicestershire, and not at Stiltc®, in Huntingdon, from which the cheese takes its name. Stilton has been honoured only because it was at its inn, where the stage-coaches stopped for lunch, that the landlady, a Leicestershire woman, first introduced to the general public the cheese made in her native vale of Belvoir. Its popularity spread fast. Early Victorian literature has frequent allusions to it as the last relish of a luxurious and convival meal, and in later t?ays it has stood as something symbolic of sound English food against doubtful foreign dainties and concocted kickshaws

A modern novelist gives us the soliloquy of a jaded sybarite at a London dinner: “I’ve had some turtle soup and a bit of tongue smothered in jam, and now I’m hungry. That waiter looks kind. I’m going to ask him to bring me a piece of Stilton hidden between tovo .biscuits.’’ A hungry woman would probably have begged for a triangle of mild Cheddar. Stilton cheese originated in days in which labour was created rather than saved. It requires infinite care and toil at the hands of the dairymaid if, in its making and maturing, it is to reach the proper standard of excellence. T’ho preparation of the mild compositions which arc supposed to be pushing Stilton out of the market is a comparatively easy and simple proce s. Woman’s chees e may be made at home in an odd hour- It is quite otherwise .■ W-ith the masculine Stilton. Great judgment and exactitude are required in such matters as the proportion of tiic binding rennet to be added to the milk and the degree of the acidity ' which the milk must have attained, j Th e cheeseroom must be kept at soireI thing like a constant temperature, and I as much as six months’ maturing is ! needed before the Stiltons are ready i for market. “Defects will creep in ’’ ! says an agricultural expert, “and it is I a difficult matter to trace their causes, j Sometimes intrusive bacteria enter : with th e water. Sometimes an excess j of one of the necessary materials, rnnnet or salt, for example, disturbs the due equilibrium existing between the normal organisms and the milk.”

Only the French Roquefort—composed exclusively of sheep's milk reenforced with the breadcrumbs, from which it ultimately derived its croon markings, and matured by currents ot cold and humid air which pass throu"b certain caves in the Avevron—can vie with the English Stilton in comn!exit-r----and chance. Roquefort, like Stilton, i « cheese nnfl in F r nc in England, the modern demand in the cheese course is less for solidifv and full than for soft con«istencv and mildness—for woman's chee c e. in short. With women approximating to the habits of men in so manv fhinrrQ besides smoking and sport., it is inter effing to find an example of men -Polthe taste of "Rut men nor women will light-lv ilfOD f vojn old eu'+O'n i”i it* b” 1 lowed shrine as sequel to the plum pudding and the mince-pies*