Globalisation of A Very English Cheese
Harding and his wife visited Ayrshire, Scotland and were responsible for the introduction there of modern cheese-making techniques. Similarly he received visits from Americans who took his ideas across the Atlantic. For these reasons cheddar cheese is produced not only in Somerset, but across the world. He did not charge for his educational efforts.
Not only did Harding himself teach his cheddaring methods in Scotland, but his wife was also invited to Ayrshire to teach.
The American dairyman Xerxes Willard visited Harding in England in 1866 and noted that in Harding’s Cheddar system “He has simplified the process of manufacture and helped to reduce it more to a science”. As a result of Willard's visit, cheddar cheese production and its popularity increased enormously in the United States.
Joseph Harding's son Henry Harding was responsible for introducing cheddar cheese production to Australia.
As a result of Harding's willingness to share his knowledge with foreign cheesemakers, later makers of cheddar from the West of England faced severe competition, in particular from intensive production in North America.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Harding
Famous quotes containing the words english and/or cheese:
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.”
—Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)