We’re the big cheese!
QUESTION Does the UK produce more varieties of cheese than France? GENERAL Charles De Gaulle is said to have famously asked: ‘How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?’ David Cameron might pose a similar question because, according to the British Cheese Board, more than 700 named cheeses are now produced in the UK.
According to the World Cheese Book by Juliet Harbutt, Britain has an ‘innovation score’ of 11.4 types of cheese for every million people. This puts it ahead of Switzerland, which has 9.6 variants, and France, which produces around 600 cheeses and has a score of 9.2.
None of this will particularly bother the French, whose cheese purists argue that their country actually produces fewer varieties, a traditional 350, each made with care and quality.
These cheeses are grouped into eight categories: fresh, soft with natural rind, soft with washed rind, pressed, pressed and cooked, goat, blue, and processed.
The French consume twice as much cheese per head as the British, and 55 per cent of the £2 billion British cheese market is attributed to sales of just one variety — cheddar. And our ‘varieties’ encompass such types as Lancashire Christmas pudding, chocolate cheese and even cheddar with mint choc chips and cherries.
However, Britain does produce some very fine cheeses, which deserve to be taken seriously.
These include the excellent Barkham Blue made by the Two Hoots Cheese in Barkham, Berkshire; Lincolnshire Poacher, made by F. W. Read & Sons in Alford, Lincolnshire, and the Stinking Bishop, produced by Charles Martell, who runs a dairy in Gloucestershire.
We also have an award-winning cheesemaker in Alex James, the Blur bass player, who produces Blue Monday (named after his favourite New Order song), a creamy Shropshire blue; Little Wallop, a soft goats’ milk cheese washed in Somerset cider brandy and wrapped in vine leaves; and Farleigh Wallop, a goats’ cheese made with thyme.
The latter was voted Best Goats’ Cheese at the 2008 British Cheese
Rock ’n’ cheese roll: Blur’s Alex James makes award-winning varieties Awards. Alex’s rock ’n’ roll lifestyle might finally have affected his thinking, however, as his new range of cheeses includes salad cream, ketchup and tikka masalaflavoured cheddars.
What might have bothered the French more was the fact that Cornish Blue, which is made by the Cornish Cheese Company, won the top prize in the 2010 International Cheese Awards.
There was a Gallic shrug of relief when they reclaimed the prize last year when the judges crowned a ten-month Ossau Iraty the 2011 World Champion.
Lea Keane, Harpenden, Herts. QUESTION How were gun barrels traditionally made? If by drilling, what kept the drill bit from ‘wandering’? THE first firearms were produced in the 14th century when they were made by bundling staves of metal around a wooden core and securing them with heated metal straps. When cooled, the straps tightened the staves to make a strong tube.
So similar was this process to that for making wooden barrels that the name transferred to the gun part.
For the next few centuries, the most guns were made by casting molten metal around a clay core.
For artillery pieces, a hole was dug in the earth to support the weight. The finished item would have its barrel smoothed by a reamer, driven by animal or water power.
Only in the 18th century did machine power and accuracy evolve sufficiently to allow the entire barrel to be bored from a solid piece of metal. For large guns this was done vertically with the weapon’s own weight driving the bore deeper.
Later still, a lathe-like machine called a gun drill was used for rifle barrels. A special tungsten bit was held rigidly while the barrel blank was rotated against it at high speed and advanced. Another cutting tool, an updated version of the reamer, widened the bore, with a final tool cutting the rifling.
Today, volume barrel production uses the hammer-forging process. After drilling and reaming, a fat steel rod is placed against a tungsten mandrel and the two are hammered together by machine while being twisted. This forces the mandrel into the rod which becomes a thinner, longer, fully rifled barrel.
Chris Rogers, Edgware, Middx. QUESTION Is there any evidence that drinking whisky can have medicinal benefits? FURTHER to earlier answers, my late father was born in 1921 into a poor background in Hunslet, Leeds.
He suffered numerous heart problems and had a triple bypass aged 59. He was the oldest patient on the ward, and although he was recovering well, it was not as quickly as his surgeon would have liked.
One day, tongue-in- cheek, he mentioned that he was missing his regular whisky nightcap. On the next drugs round he was given a tot with his medication — which he was very pleased about and much to the envy of the other patients.
Sadly he died in 2002 aged 81 — but until then had kept up his tradition of a tot of whisky every night.
He had been a tail-gunner in the RAF for which he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM), and often used to swop his bacon sandwiches for an extra tot of rum.
During the Sixties, he was hospitalised after yet another heart attack and given Guinness to build him up. So maybe there are some beneficial aspects to alcohol.
Ruth Rose, Southampton. MY Three-year-old became very ill when he contracted salmonella and was later hospitalised with severe dehydration. Despite being released from hospital, he simply could not shake off the salmonella bug. Then someone suggested giving him 97 per cent spirit to kill it off. For three days we gave him a teaspoon of whisky before breakfast and he was cured.
We have a saying in Poland, ‘who is drinking and not smoking has no pests’. I can’t vouch for the smoking, though. Krystyna Ferguson,
Rochford, Essex. QUESTION Who first came up with the idea for soil improvement using lime? When was it introduced to Britain? FURTHER to the earlier answer, Gervase Markham reported in 1625: ‘The Weald of Sussex is of a very barren nature and unapt for either tillage or pasture until it be “holpen” by some manner of comfort, as dung, marle or ashes.’ Marl is a calcareous clay and was dug from bell-pits.
One application every 15 to 20 years was required, and many fields are dimpled by pits around their edges. Landlords let their farms with marling requirements, and one record is that seven men and six boys took eight weeks to dress 11 acres at a cost of seven shillings per acre.
As roads and transport improved, lime replaced this practice, and by 1805 the Earl of Ashburnham was known as The Greatest Lime Burner in England.
Desmond Gunner, Buxted, Sussex.
QUESTIONS Q: Do the French call the French horn ‘the horn’?
Tim Weston, Billericay, Essex. Q: I recently bought some Tesco mince. In the small print it stated it was slaughtered in 2007 — five years ago. Is this common practice? How is it stored? Jacqueline Feasey,
address supplied. Q: Some new cars have two rows of white ‘fairy lights’ at the front. What are they for?
Jeff Tucker, Snodland, Kent.