British Cuisine: Port Wine & Stilton for Christmas

Stilton is a type of English cheese, known for its characteristic strong smell. It is produced in two varieties: the well-known blue and the lesser-known white.

Blue Stilton is often eaten with celery or pears. It is also commonly added as a flavouring to vegetable soup, most notably to cream of celery or broccoli. Alternatively it is eaten with various crackers, biscuits and bread. It can also be used to make a blue cheese sauce to be served drizzled over a steak, or can be crumbled over a salad. Traditionally, port is drunk with blue Stilton. The cheese is traditionally eaten at Christmas.

White Stilton is often blended with other materials such as dried fruit, and has even been used as the flavouring for chocolate.

* Stilton in Literature

British author G. K. Chesterton wrote a couple of essays on cheese, specifically on the absence of cheese in art. In one of his essays he recalls a time when he, by chance, visited a small town in the fenlands of England (= a naturally marshy region in eastern England), which turned out to be Stilton. His experience in Stilton left a deep impression on him, which he expressed through poetry in his Sonnet to a Stilton Cheese. His opening phrase Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour is in part a parody of William Wordsworth's sonnet London, 1802, the opening line of which was "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour."

English novelist George Orwell wrote an essay, "In Defence of English Cooking", first published in the Evening Standard on 15 December 1945. While enumerating the high points of British cuisine, he touches on Stilton: "Then there are the English cheeses. There are not many of them but I fancy that Stilton is the best cheese of its type in the world, with Wensleydale not far behind."