WITH today being National Cheese Lovers’ Day, new research has been undertaken to find the nation’s favourite cheese and which ones fail to impress.
The findings, revealed by sports nutrition experts Bulk.com, is based on the ratings and popularity of over 200 cheese-based recipes on BBC Good Food.
The survey also looked at search trend data to reveal how people’s love for cheese had grown over the last five years.
National Cheese Lovers’ Day shows the UK’s admiration for varieties from around the world.
And many will be pleased to discover that it’s the humble mature cheddar – aged from six to 12 months – that appeared most-frequently in the nation’s top-rated and most-used recipes, beating its mild and extra-mature counterparts to the top spot.
Cheddar is a very versatile cheese featuring in a number of cheese dishes. Among them are cauliflower cheese, double-cheese toasties, and nachos.
Things get a bit more divisive from there, with goat’s cheese proving second most popular. Although this cheese suits more of an acquired taste, research recently suggests its demand is growing due to its higher protein content and low cholesterol content.
Goat’s cheese can be prepared in a variety of ways, the recipe analysis found, appearing in dishes in both roasted, grilled, fried and fresh formats.
Next up was parmesan – with the hard Italian cheese most commonly-associated with popular pasta dishes. However, the research found it also makes appearances in pies, fondues, cauliflower cheese and quiches.
Interestingly, a vegan parmesan counterpart also appeared in one of just four of the top-rated vegan cheese recipes – with a substitute for the hard cheese being made from cashews, garlic powder and nutritional yeast.
Here are the nation’s top ten cheeses
- Mature cheddar
- Goat’s cheese
- Parmesan
- Mild cheddar
- Extra mature cheddar
- Mozzarella
- Gruyere
- Blue cheese
- Cream cheese
- Camembert
Cheeses that didn’t quite make it into the top ten but that still appeared in the popular recipes included gorgonzola, ricotta, brie and emmental.
As well as looking at the main event themselves, the analysis reveals which flavours and accompaniments often appeared in the top-rated dishes – and found that nutmeg appeared most-frequently, followed by garlic, chives, lemon, and english mustard.
Some of the least-utilised but featured flavours came out as white truffle, walnut, tomato pesto, spring onion, soy sauce and saffron.
On top of the recipe data, Bulk.com also looked at Google searches made for ten cheese-related terms (including cheeseboard, cheese recipes, popular cheeses and vegan cheese) to reveal how our interest in the dairy product has changed in the last five years.
The findings show that our interest in cheese is steadily increasing, with searches rising by an average of eight per cent year-on-year nationwide, with searches for ‘charcuterie’ having seen the biggest increase since 2018.
