Potted Cheese

When the fridge arrives at Downton in season 6 it’s yet another sign of encroaching modernity. Although ice caves and chests had been around since the mid-nineteenth century, it took the arrival of electricity and the development of (relatively) efficient artificial chilling processes to allow what we call fridges to develop. In the United Kingdom take-up of the new technology was slow: most houses did not have electricity, and the system of wet, dry, and cool larders that had developed ove