What is Shropshire Blue Cheese?
Shropshire cheese is a rather "modern" cheese, with a history going back only as far as the early 20th century. Despite its name, it was not born as a "Shropshire Lad", but far to the north in Scotland. Orange coloring was simply a matter of distinguishing it from others, quite similar to the Cheshire story on coloring. The orange color comes from the addition of annatto, a natural food coloring.
Over time it has moved south and is now made by the same folks making Stilton in the East Midlands of England.
The cheese at first appears to be much like the Stilton but is really more like a Blue Cheshire. It has a more flaky and crumbly texture and the blue is quite mild in a fully ripened cheese. The extensive ripening results in the cheese body collapsing with a fine network of blue veins running through it. It shows a really nice balance between the breakdown of fat and protein, resulting in a cheese that will stand on its own accompanied with only a nice dark ale. Shropshire is generally creamier and less nutty than Stilton.
The cheese is made into drums about 8-9 inches in diameter, 14 inches high, and weighing about 17 lbs. It has a light brown exterior, with an orange interior. The orange interior has blue and green veins of mold throughout the cheese from the same mold that makes Roquefort blue: Penicillium roqueforti.
Note the color of the Shropshire Blue in comparison to other blue cheeses shown in photo to the left here.
Today it is made in a similar way to Stilton, it is a soft cheese with a sharp, strong flavor that takes between six to eight weeks to mature, but longer is usually well worth the wait.