What Is Resurrection Cheese?

Don't worry. They don't make it anymore. Though technically, if you wanted to bring this creepy cheese back, you certainly could. It isn't gross, really. This cheese didn't die; and it definitely hasn't been brought back from the dead. It is, however, familiar with the graveyard.

Resurrection cheese is what resulted when, in the 1860s, a townsman of Llanfihangel Abercowyn, in the Carmarthen county of Wales, wanted to make cheese but didn't have enough money for the proper equipment. He didn't make a deal with the devil in exchange for a cheese-press; rather, he called upon his resourcefulness, made a trip to the abandoned graveyard in town, and with a few fallen headstones he fashioned his own cheese press.

Farmhouse cheeses were large -- sometimes nearly two feet in diameter -- and circular; and evidently, able to easily copy the inscription of a headstone. When this townsman sold his cheese at the market, with a clear gravestone inscription, one of his customers exclaimed, "You have resurrected this cheese from Llanfihangel churchyard!" From then on, its "official" name was resurrection cheese.

Reportedly, cheeses were inscribed with lines such as "Here lies Blodwen Evans, aged 72." If you ask us, that's one loaded piece of cheese -- every bite reminding you of your own mortality. Why this man didn't choose to press his cheese with the blank side of the tombstone is curious. Perhaps he thought the inscriptions were a unique marketing tactic?

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