Shropshire Blue Cheese Wedge. Picture Partners / Getty Images via Canva Pro.
Shropshire Blue is an English orange cheese with veins of greenish-blue mould growing in it.
It tastes somewhat like a cheddar with the tang of a blue cheese. It is somewhat milder and sweeter than Stilton.
Production
Despite its name, Shropshire Blue is actually made in Nottinghamshire, by methods similar to Stilton.
Pasteurized cow’s milk is curdled with a vegetarian rennet, and inoculated with Penicillium roqueforti.
The cheese is coloured with annatto, which makes the cheese an orangish-yellow.
It is made in cylinders 30 cm high x 20 cm wide (12 by 8 inches), with an average weight of 8 kg (17 ½ pounds). It is matured for a minimum of 12 weeks; some brands are aged much longer.
Mature Shropshire Blue Cheese in grocery-store cheese counter. © CooksInfo / 2020
Nutrition
Fat content: 48%
Equivalents
1 cup, crumbled ≈ ¼ pound ≈ 115 g
History Notes
Shropshire Blue was developed in the 1970s in Inverness, Scotland by a man named Andy Williamson, who had learned how to make blue cheeses in Nottinghamshire, England. It was originally called “Inverness-shire Blue”.
Throughout the rest of the UK, though, it was marketed as “Shropshire Blue.” When the creamery in Scotland that made it was shut down in 1980, two dairies in Nottinghamshire, Clawson Dairy and Colston Bassett Dairy, picked up the recipe.
Whole Shropshire Blue Cheese. Machine Headz / Getty Images Signature via Canva Pro.