Green Cheese

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

green cheese of which the moon was thought to be composed until the contrary revelations of American spacemen in the 1970s, has never meant the same as blue cheese. In medieval England it seems to have meant ‘new’ cheese, for Andrew Boorde (1542) stated that ‘Grene chese is not called grene by ye reason of colour, but for ye newnes of it, for the whay is not half pressed out.’

However, in more recent times the term has referred to a cheese, of the cottage cheese type or derby, coloured with sage (see sage cheese) and spinach juice.