🧀 Caerphilly cheese

Caerphilly is a Welsh cow's milk cheese: a flat round cheese with a creamy white paste and a mild, slightly lemony taste when young ¹. Its protected form, Traditional Welsh Caerphilly / Traditional Welsh Caerffili, was registered in the EU in 2018 ³ and now stands in the UK register ².

The protected cheese uses milk from Welsh farms, raw or pasteurised, organic or not. With starter it ripens for 30–60 minutes at 28–32 °C; after rennet the curd is cut into 10–14 mm cubes and heated only to 32–35 °C. It is broken into walnut-sized pieces, packed into moulds by hand and pressed, first at about 1.5 bar, then at 2 bar. Salt is 1–2%: about 1% dry salt goes into the curd, and the cheese may also spend 12–24 hours in brine ¹.

Large cubes and a low temperature keep the moisture in, so the paste is smooth, close and flaky. By comparison, cheddar curd is cut to the size of rice grains and a cheddar weighs 20 kg against 2–4 kg for Caerphilly. It is 20–25 cm across and 6–12 cm deep, and sold without cloth. Fat is 45–55% of the dry matter, and a young cheese has at least 55% dry matter. It is kept at 10–12 °C: ready from 10 days, it can mature for up to 6 months, and the taste grows fuller but stays mild ¹.

The specification ties the cheese to Welsh pasture: over 96% of agricultural land is under grass (1995 census), lowland farms average 300 grass-growing days, and cows graze for up to 10 months a year ¹.

The recipe goes back at least to the 19th century: Annie Evans wrote it in a notebook of 1907. Thomas Phaer reported large shipments of butter and cheese along the Glamorgan coast as early as 1552–1553. In the mid-19th century the weekly market in the town of Caerphilly made the name: the market hall caretaker Edward Lewis tested cheese and stamped it with Caerphilly Castle and the words "Caws Cymru", "Caws Pur", "Genuine Caerphilly Cheese"; the practice ended with his death in 1909 ¹.

After the Milk Marketing Board began in 1933, farmers could sell milk more profitably and farmhouse cheesemaking declined. Making Caerphilly was prohibited during the 1939–1945 war, and restrictions were lifted in 1953. In the late 1950s a few creameries in Wales and England took it up again: the 1970 show had 8 entries, 4 from each country. After milk quotas came in 1984, many farmers turned to artisan cheese ¹.

Why it matters to you. "Caerphilly" alone on a label does not guarantee origin: only the name Traditional Welsh Caerphilly promises Wales and Welsh farm milk ¹². A young cheese is fresh and lemony, a matured one fuller. That it is "the only native cheese of Wales" is the specification's own claim, not an independent finding ¹.