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The Mould of the Blue-Veined Cheeses

University College, Cardiff

ABSTRACT

Certain cheeses, much prized by the public, are characterised by a blue or green marbling, due to which they are classed as the blue-veined cheeses. They include such well-known varieties of cheese as the French ewes-milk Roquefort, the Italian Gorgonzola, the English Stilton, Wensleydale and blue-Dorset, and the less commonly known Welsh blue-Caerphilly.

The marbling is caused by the growth of a mould usually still referred to in this country as Penicillium glaucum; but this name is too general as it embraces several distinct varieties of Penicillium mould.

Charles Thorn in America made an extensive study of the French Roquefort cheese and always found present in it a more or less pure culture of a specific mould which he termed Penicillium roqueforti. Even though many other species may be present in the original milk no other blue mould is likely to develop much in a well-made Roquefort cheese, due to the low oxygen content of the gas in the spaces of the cheese; 2.4 per cent to 7 per cent according to Thorn and Currie.