Cheddar cheese

Cheddar cheese

Cheddar cheese is a fairly hard, pale yellow to orange, sharp tasting cheese originating from the English village of Cheddar, in Somerset. Although Cheddar cheese is originally English, it is also widely produced in other countries, including Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada.

In England, Cheddar tends to have a sharp, pungent flavour, often slightly earthy. Its texture is firm, with farmhouse traditional cheddar being slightly crumbly. It is always a pale yellow colour, and food colourings are not used. In parts of the United States and Canada, annatto, extracted from the tropical achiote tree, is used to give Cheddar cheese a deep orange colour. The origins of this practice have been long since forgotten, but the three leading theories appear to be:

• to allow the cheese to have a consistent colour from batch to batch
• to assist the purchaser in identifying the type of cheese when it is unlabelled
• to identify the cheese's region of origin (i.e., not from Cheddar).

Make your own Cheddar cheese

Have a go at making your own Cheddar cheese with our Cheddar cheese recipe here.

See also

• West Country Farmhouse Cheddar cheese

Calories in different varieties and various types of cheeses

The number of calories in various types of cheese is very similar when you compare your cheese to a similar types of cheese.

For example, almost cheeses that are similar to Cheddar cheese have around 400 calories per 100g

If the Cheddar cheese is not listed below, select a similar type of cheese from the list below to get a rough idea for the number of calories in Cheddar cheese.

The calorie lists are sortable by clicking the up and down arrows in the heading columns

Cheese type	Calories per 100g
American cheese	371
Blue cheese	353
Camembert cheese	299
Cheddar cheese	402
Cottage cheese	98
Edam cheese	357
Farmer's cheese	98
Feta cheese	264
Fontina cheese	389
Goat cheese	364
Gouda cheese	356
Gruyere cheese	413
Mozzarella cheese	280
Parmesan cheese	431
Pimento cheese	375
Provolone cheese	352
Queso blanco cheese	310
Ricotta cheese	174
Roquefort cheese	369
Swiss cheese	380

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Errors and omissions

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