Shropshire Blue

Shropshire Blue
© Denzil Green

Despite it’s name, it 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.

It is made in cylinders 12 inches high x 8 inches wide, with an average weight of 17 1/2 pounds. (30 cm high x 20 cm wide; 8 kg.) It’s matured for a minimum of 12 weeks; some brands are aged much longer.

The cheese is coloured with annatto, which makes the cheese an orangish-yellow. The veins of mould are a greenish-blue. It tastes somewhat like a cheddar with the tang of a blue cheese. It is somewhat milder and sweeter than Stilton.

At present (2004), two dairies make the cheese, Clawson Dairy and Colston Bassett Dairy.

Nutrition

Fat content: 48%

Equivalents

1 cup, crumbled = 1/4 pound = 115g

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 picked up the recipe.