Shelburne Farms' clothbound cheddar has a bright yellow color because it's made from the milk of cows that graze on grasses high in beta-carotene.
Posted on 11/09/2013 4:31:29 AM PST by NYer
Shelburne Farms' clothbound cheddar has a bright yellow color because it's made from the milk of cows that graze on grasses high in beta-carotene.
The news from Kraft last week that the company is ditching two artificial dyes in some versions of its macaroni and cheese products left me with a question.
Why did we start coloring cheeses orange to begin with? Turns out there's a curious history here.
In theory, cheese should be whitish — similar to the color of milk, right?
Well, not really. Centuries ago in England, lots of cheeses had a natural yellowish-orange pigment. The cheese came from the milk of certain breeds of cows, such as Jersey and Guernsey. Their milk tends to be richer in color from beta-carotene in the grass they eat.
So, when the orange pigment transferred to the cow's milk, and then to the cheese, it was considered a mark of quality.
"Cows on the grassy hillsides of Shelburne Farms in Vermont."
But here's where the story gets interesting.
Cheese expert Paul Kindstedt of the University of Vermont explains that back in the 17th century, many English cheesemakers realized that they could make more money if they skimmed off the cream — to sell it separately or make butter from it.
But in doing so, most of the color was lost, since the natural orange pigment is carried in the fatty cream.
So, to pass off what was left over — basically low-fat cheese made from white milk — as a high-quality product, the cheesemakers faked it.
"The cheesemakers were initially trying to trick people to mask the white color [of their cheese]," explains Kindstedt.
They began adding coloring from saffron, marigold, carrot juice and later, annatto, which comes from the seeds of a tropical plant. (It's also what Kraft will use to color its new varieties of macaroni and cheese.)
The devious cheesemakers of the 17th century used these colorings to pass their products off as the full-fat, naturally yellowish-orange cheese that Londoners had come to expect.
The tradition of coloring cheese then carried over in the U.S. Lots of cheesemakers in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and New York have a long history of coloring cheddar.
The motivation was part tradition, part marketing to make their cheeses stand out. There was another reason, too: It helped cheesemakers achieve a uniform color in their cheeses.
But Kindstedt says it's not a tradition that ever caught on in New England dairy farms.
"Here in New England there was a disdain for brightly colored cheese," Kindstedt says.
And that's why to this day, we still see lots of naturally white cheddar cheese from places such as Vermont.
With the boom in the artisanal food movement, we're starting to see more cheese produced from grass-fed cows.
And as a result, we may notice the butterlike color in summer cheeses — similar to what the 17th century Londoners ate.
"We absolutely see the color changes when the cows transition onto pasture in early May," cheesemaker Nat Bacon of Shelburne Farms in Vermont wrote to us in an email. He says it's especially evident "in the whey after we cut the curd, and also in the finished cheese. Both get quite golden in color, kind of like straw, with the beta-carotenes the cows are eating in the fresh meadow grasses."
I call my grandkid’s eggs survivor chicken eggs because of all the chickens they have lost to predators. They even had vultures attack & kill their chickens.
Pumpkins are a good winter feed for laying chickens. Brings back the nice colored yokes & helps keep up the laying.
How does it compare to Russian cheese?
A local cheese where I live is Circassian cheese. It is similar to mozzarella. Until recently, most of the local pizza cafes would use this cheese because mozzarella was not available. They have imported a lot of German made cheeses for years - Gouda, Maasdam, Tilsiter and Edam have been popular.
Now, though, cheese is being imported from other countries. We're getting cheeses from all over Europe, and even New Zealand!
On my recent European trip, I got to visit the town of Edam, and got to sample the local cheeses, it was fantastic.
The Dutch students we were living with had a standing order of having 8 cases of Heineken delivered to our living quarters (2nd & 3rd floors of a townhouse) every week. (there were 5 of us living there).
Needless to say, I love the Dutch!
Very interesting. Is it just cows that have this K2 in their milk or is it found in goat milk (for instance) and other ruminants? I don’t have enough land for a cow, but have thought of getting a couple goats.
Wow! Thank you for that info.
Could the grain feeding also be a contributor to the obesity epidemic, I wonder.
The margarine people must have learned this from the cheese makers. Margarine without coloring looks like white like a slab of lard.
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Back in the late 1940s or very early 1950s, margarine came with a coloring packet of some sort. I do not remember it, but my older sisters remember getting the job of mixing the coloring in.
bttt
Curd I say that you’re having whey too much fun with the puns? I just swiss you lots more good tommes.
Hmmmmmm.. I bought a lovely aged Tillamook cheddar a couple of weeks ago at Costco. It was white! I was surprised because it always used to be yellow. I suppose those granola types in Oregon have discontinued the dyes.
In any case, it was delicious and I bought another block of it this afternoon to serve at a dinner party I’m giving next weekend.
Tillamook is hard to find in Wisconsin and is (by far) my favorite cheese. My daddy used to make late night snacks with it when I was a child. Cheese and jelly sandwiches at 10 pm were a real treat when you are 7-10 and supposed to be in bed.
Pretty interesting. I have, from time to time, wondered about the yellow color, but I had not gotten around to researching it. Thanks.
When I was a child in CA, colored margarine was illegal. Margarine came in a brick, had to be softened, and then you had to stir the color in. It was a lot of work, but the Dairy Lobby kept a tight rein on the rules.
After WWII, the margarine folks started marketing margarine in plastic bags with a dye bubble in the middle. Yoou could squeeze the bubble to break it and then knead the bag until the color spread throughout the white margarine evenly.
Coloring the margarine was my chore when I was 6-10.
Cool!
Thanks!
I really miss the “real” cheeses (cut from bulk as required) that prevailed when I was a kid, and into my teens. It’s still available in delis of course, but the cheeses themselves have vanished in favor of imported stuff.
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