Blacksticks Blue

Blacksticks Blue is a soft, blue-veined cheese made by Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses in Lancashire. Blacksticks is the name of the local farm where the cheese was first made in the 1950s. The name is from a line of chestnut trees that in the winter, without their leaves, looked like stark black sticks on the horizon.

The naming story also has a cheesy visual coincidence! During the production process, when the cheese is pierced with needles to encourage the famous blue veins, the rods leave marks that look like little black sticks.

Made from pasteurised cow's milk, it is aged for about eight weeks, during which it develops a distinctive amber colour and a smooth but tangy flavour. Soft enough to spread on bread or crackers, it is also versatile for cooking and suitable for vegetarians. The orange colour is obtained by the use of annatto.

The farm itself was named for a line of chestnut trees that, in the winter, dropped their leaves and looked like stark black sticks on the horizon. [1, 2, 3]

The naming story also has a cheesy visual coincidence! During the production process, when the cheese is pierced with needles to encourage the famous blue veins, the rods leave marks that look like—you guessed it—little black stick

Lancashire

Lancashire is an English cow's-milk cheese from the county of Lancashire. There are three distinct varieties of Lancashire cheese. Young Creamy Lancashire and mature Tasty Lancashire are produced by a traditional method, whereas Crumbly Lancashire (more commonly known as Lancashire Crumbly within Lancashire) is a more recent creation suitable for mass production.

It is traditionally paired with Eccles cakes and Chorley cakes.

Waitrose sell the creamy Lancashire which tastes a little like Cheddar.

For centuries, Lancashire dairy farmers' wives made cheese from surplus milk. On small farms there was insufficient milk from a single day to make a cheese, and so each day's milk was curdled and accumulated for several days until there was enough curd to make a cheese. Uniquely amongst all British cheeses, two or three days' curd of varying maturity are blended together, giving Lancashire cheese a distinctive character. The traditional method was standardised in the 1890s by Joseph Gornall of Garstang and Pilling, a county council employee, who visited many Lancashire farms to establish a method and recipe that is still used today – the "Gornall method". His "Gornall Patent Cheesemaker" was sold between 1892 and 1919.

Creamy Lancashire cheese is made by this traditional method and matured for a period of four to twelve weeks. It has a fluffy texture and creamy flavour, and is good for toasting, as it does not become stringy when melted.