owe their flavour and appearance to a blue mould, usually Penicillium roqueforti or P. glaucum. Some of the finest blue cheeses, such as Roquefort, continued until recent times to be of ‘natural’ formation in the sense that they picked up their special moulds from their surroundings; but virtually all blue cheeses are now deliberately inoculated with the chosen mould, so that their development is fully under control. In the larger and harder blue cheeses, the mould is encouraged to penetrate throughout by stabbing the cheese with copper needles which carry mould spores to the interior. Even the hardest blue cheeses have a fairly open-textured curd which allows mould to grow between the granules, giving a marbled appearance to a slice of the cheese.
The characteristic flavour of blue cheese is largely due to the action of the lipase enzymes produced by the mould. These break down fats in the cheese to yield fatty acids, especially butyric acid; methyl ketones; alcohols; esters; and other compounds.
See also bleu; blue vinney; Gorgonzola; Roquefort; Stilton.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
