Why cheddar orange

This leaches the colour out into a solution, which is then added into the milk right at the beginning of cheese making. This colours the curds and gives the orange and red cheeses their hue. So how did a South American plant come to be colouring traditional British territorial cheeses like Leicester and Cheshire, as well as French classics like Mimolette? It is thought to have begun in southwest England — particularly Gloucestershire, with the practice spreading to the surrounding areas of Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Leicestershire.

These counties traditionally used all sorts of colouring agents to add colour to their cheese: carrot juice, turmeric, marigold petals and even homegrown saffron which was grown in the UK in those days, Saffron Walden being the major English centre for the production of the saffron crocus in the Middle Ages.

In the 18th century, Britain began to import more coffee, spices and all types of produce from the Americas. Consequently the locally-sourced colourants became superseded by the imported annatto — because it produced a better result in terms of colour with less effect on texture and flavour.

The answer is simple — aesthetics. It was all about the looks. People knew that when the best cows were out at pasture in the spring and summer the fat in their milk would pick up a pigment from the grass called beta-carotene which is abundant in fresh pasture, but not so much in winter feed such as silage and hay.

And not only does this mean full-fat pasture-fed milk is the best, most flavoursome milk, but it also gives the best flavours to many cheeses. And with it, goes the yellow colour. Hence the best cheeses were considered to be richer yellow in colour, and this was something the discerning cheese buyers were looking for. This also helped produce a consistent year-round tinge.

When is Mercury not in retrograde? And since when is it normal for cheese to be orange? Picture a cheeseburger , a grilled cheese , a bowl of macaroni and cheese , or a box of Cheez-Its. The cheese is orange, but why? The Aztecs used it as body paint. The seeds contain bixen and norbixen, which are caretenoids and antioxidants.

But that doesn't seem to explain why they were added to cheese in the first place. Cheddar cheese began in a place called Cheddar , Somerset County, England. Cheesemaking in the area goes back to AD and something distinguished as Cheddar cheese to the s. Cheddaring is now the term for a method of dealing with the curds, though not only in Cheddar. Back when cows actually ate grass, they produced a more yellowy milk in spring and summer because of the beta carotenes in the grass.

Over the winter, they ate hay, which is dried grass. It has lost the beta carotenes, so the milk is paler. People saw the yellower cheese as being better, so cheese makers added colour to make the cheese look darker all year and fetch a higher price.

In another version of this, cheese makers outside of Cheddar added colour to make their cheese more like the cheese from the well-fed cows of Cheddar.