How cheddar is made
Cheddar's dense, flaky body comes from cheddaring, where slabs of curd are stacked, turned and squeezed.
- stations
- 9
- things upstream
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- raw sources
- 3
- steps from the ground
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The short version
Cheddar begins with soured milk set by rennet. The curd is cut and heated to push out whey, then the slabs are piled up and turned over and over, which squeezes out more moisture. The curd is milled, salted, pressed into blocks and left to mature for months or years.
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Sour the milk
Starter bacteria are added to warm milk. They turn milk sugar into lactic acid, which gives the cheese its first tang and prepares the milk for rennet.
Goes in -
Set it with rennet
Rennet, the enzyme complex that separates curds from whey, is stirred in. Vegetarian cheddar uses chymosin made by a mold or yeast. Orange cheddar gets a plant extract such as annatto added at this point to give it color.
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Cut the curd
Once the milk has gelled, blades cut it into small cubes so whey can run out of each piece.
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Heat the cubes
Hard cheeses like cheddar are warmed after cutting. Heat forces out more whey and shapes the final flavor.
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Stack and turn the slabs
The curd is drained into slabs, which are piled up and flipped repeatedly. The weight of the stack squeezes out moisture. This is cheddaring, and it gives cheddar its dense, flaky texture.
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Mill and salt
The slabs are cut into small pieces and mixed with salt. Salt preserves the cheese, pulls out more water and firms the texture.
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Press into blocks
The salted curd goes into molds and is pressed. More pressure squeezes out more moisture and fuses the pieces into one solid body.
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Vacuum-pack the blocks
Block-shaped cheeses are sealed in vacuum bags for storage and shipping, in place of the paper and twine used a century ago.
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Mature in the cold
Sealed blocks sit at a steady temperature while enzymes break down protein and fat into sharp-tasting compounds. Vintage cheddar needs 15 months or more. Bitter peptides build up as it ages, and they are part of what people mean by sharp.
15 months or more for vintage
Worth repeating
- The village of Cheddar in Somerset has caves whose steady temperature and humidity were once used to mature the cheese, and a little still is.
- In 1904 Canada exported 234,000,000 pounds of cheddar, and cheddar was the country's second-largest export after timber.
- The sharp flavor of aged cheddar is tied to bitter peptides, and the crunchy specks in old cheddar are crystals of calcium lactate.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and cheddar starts as these 3 raw sources.
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Sources
Cite this page: "How cheddar is made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/cheddar