Dunlop (cheese)

In the 17th century, Dunlop cheese gained fame and distribution. His recipe and cooking method was compiled by a woman named Barbara Gilmore. She was a Scot, but because of the pressure felt at that time by the Calvinist Presbyterians , she was forced to move to live in Ireland . She was able to learn some recipes from local cheese makers and learned how to cook cottage cheese from whole milk ^[2] . In 1688, Barbara Gilmore returned to Scotland ^[3] and married farmer John Dunlop. She combined some recipes and began to make a unique kind of cheese. At that time, cheese was not made from whole milk in Scotland and could even be accused of witchcraft for such an innovation. It is believed that the author of the Dunlop cheese recipe could be completely different people whose names were not preserved in history, but it was Barbara Gilmore who contributed to its distribution in Scotland. She traveled and introduced the merchants to the products, who later sold Dunlop cheese in Glasgow . By the end of the XVIII century, the technology of making Dunlop cheese spread across all the cities of Scotland, and this cheese replaced the others made from sheep’s milk. At the beginning of the XIX century, this technology of cheese production began to be actively used in the west of Scotland, but already from the middle of the XIX century it began to decrease. Cheese Dunlop competed with other cheeses, which ripened faster, like Cheddar (Eng. Cheddar ), and cost less than Lancashire cheese (Eng. Lancashire cheese ). In 1940, in the county, cheese production at an industrial level ceased and resumed only in 1989. Since 2007, Dunlop cheese began to be produced near the farm on which it was first prepared in the 17th century. In 2015, Dunlop cheese received the status of protected geographical food in Europe ^[2] .

The cheese has a sweet taste and nutty aroma. It has an oily structure. In the process of cooking using a special salt saturated with magnesium sulfate . The taste of cheese is formed six months later, it is almost absent in young cheese. Dunlop cheese resembles Cheddar cheese in many ways, but has a softer texture. It can be served as an independent dish, or can be used as one of the ingredients of other dishes ^[3] . The crust of cheese is yellowish. The cheese ripens from 6 to 12 months. Six months later, the texture of the cheese becomes soft, and after a year it hardens ^[1] .