Today I Learned: How 17Th Century Fraud Gave Rising To Brilliant Orangish Cheese

From NPR, November 7, 2013

The Paul Kindstedt of the University of Vermont explains that dorsum inward the 17th century, many English linguistic communication cheesemakers realized that they could brand to a greater extent than coin if they skimmed off the cream — to sell it separately or brand butter from it.

But inward doing so, almost of the color was lost, since the natural orangish paint is carried inward the obese cream.

So, to top off what was left over — basically low-fat cheese made from white milk — equally a high-quality product, the cheesemakers faked it.

"The cheesemakers were initially trying to play a joke on people to mask the white color [of their cheese]," explains Kindstedt.

They began adding coloring from saffron, marigold, carrot juice together with later, annatto, which comes from the seeds of a tropical plant. (It's also what Kraft volition work to color its novel varieties of macaroni together with cheese.)

The devious cheesemakers of the 17th century used these colorings to top their products off equally the full-fat, naturally yellowish-orange cheese that Londoners had come upwards to expect.

The tradition of coloring cheese hence carried over inward the U.S.A. Lots of cheesemakers inward Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin together with New York bring a long history of coloring cheddar.

The motivation was role tradition, role marketing to brand their cheeses stand upwards out. There was closed to other reason, too: It helped cheesemakers accomplish a uniform color inward their cheeses.

But Kindstedt says it's non a tradition that always caught on inward New England dairy farms.

"Here inward New England in that place was a disdain for brightly colored cheese," Kindstedt says....

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HT: the archive of the sadly defunct The Appendix