Cheddar cheese is a pale yellow, sharp-tasting cheese originally made in the English village of Cheddar, in Somerset. Cheddar-style cheeses are produced in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Much of this cheese is mass-produced and quality varies enormously. The strong flavour develops over time, with a taste diverse enough that food packaging will usually indicate a strength ("mild" to "strong/sharp/mature"), or the maturation period. Cheddar has perhaps always been the most popular cheese in England. A pipe roll of King Henry II records the purchase of 10,420 pounds (avoirdupois pounds and troy pounds did not exist then, probably tower pounds or about 3650 kg) at a farthing per pound (£3 per tonne).

Cheddaring refers to an additional step in the production of cheddar-style cheese where the curd is cut into cubes to drain the whey, then stacked and turned.

Cheddar cheese has become too widely produced to have a 'protected designated origin'. However, the European Union recognised 'West Country Farmhouse Cheddar' as a protected designation of origin. To meet this criteria the cheese must be made in the traditional manner using local ingredients in four designated counties of south-west England.

Like many cheeses, the colour of cheddar is often modified by the use of food colourings. Annatto, extracted from the tropical achiote tree, is frequently used to give cheddar an orange colour. The origins of this practice are clouded, but the three leading theories appear to be to allow the cheese to have a consistent colour from batch to batch, to assist the purchaser in identifying the type of cheese when it is unlabelled, or to identify the cheese's region of origin. In the United States, cheddar that has not been coloured is frequently labelled as "white cheddar" or "Vermont cheddar", regardless of whether it was produced in the state of Vermont.

Cheddar is one of several products used by the United States Department of Agriculture to track the dairy industry ; reports are issued weekly detailing prices and production quantities. The state of Wisconsin produces the most cheddar in the United States; other centers of production include upstate New York, Vermont, and Tillamook, Oregon.

White House historians assert that U.S. president Andrew Jackson held an open house party where a 1,400 pound (635 kg) block of cheddar cheese was served as refreshment. A cheese of 7,000 pounds (3,175 kg) was produced in Ingersoll, Ontario in 1866 and exhibited in New York and Britain; it was immortalised in the famous poem "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds" by James McIntyre, who is widely alleged to be the worst poet in all of Canadian literature. A still larger Wisconsin Cheddar cheese of 34,951 pounds (15,853 kg) was produced for the New York World's Fair in 1964. It required the equivalent of the daily milk production of 16,000 cows.

External links

• Food and Drug Administration
• ILoveCheese.com
• Andrew Jackson's 1,400 lb Cheddar
• "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds" - full text of the poem, with notes