I live in the UK and have been eating cheddar all my life. I’ve yet to see an orange cheddar! They’re all a very cheesey yellow. Do we only add dye to the cheeses we ship and to Red Leicester?
I`m originally from Quebec, now living in Ontario. Back home, cheese was pretty much always yellow-white (the real colour), while in Ontario its nearly impossible to find white cheddar. Even cheeses like mozarella are dyed here! Not to mention curd cheese, if you can find it at all. Even this is orange. Who ever heard of a poutine with orange cheese?? I tell ya, it drives my boyfriend and I crazy. Apparently, according to a couple of grocery stores we’ve been to, white cheese just doesn’t sell. Crazy Ontarians.
The column in question in Why is cheddar cheese orange? (02-Oct-1998). At least in my part of the US, the standard grocery-store types of cheeses come in default colors: white (mozzerella, swiss, and montery jack) and yellow/orange (cheddar and colby). Most grocery stores stock some additional “specialty” (i.e., more expensive) cheeses, and of course specialty stores stock more yet. As far as I know these are mostly white; hopefully someone else’ll come along with a list of comes-standard-in-yellow cheeses. The only type I’ve seen come in both white and orange (and this only in the specialty stores) is…cheddar. Never seen yellow mozzerella.
American cheese can also be either white or yellow, and both are stocked at my (non-specialty) grocery store. This probably depends on region: In Cleveland, it’s almost impossible to find white American, while no self-respecting Philadelphian would ever use yellow.
Most places I’ve seen it, cheddar is usually an orangeish-yellow color.
Unca Cecil sez:
Huh? The “white cheddar” marketed 'round heyah is white as wind-driven snow. Do they have to do something special to avoid the unappetizing dirty yellow color? Or is this white stuff conterfeit cheddar? Or, could gasp Cecil’s sources be wrong?
well, I know someone born in Somerset who should know, and she’s pretty offended by what Americans call “cheddar.” (I’m an American and didn’t know any better…until…) Mass produced “cheddar” in the US is not only dyed orange, it is not aged/matured very long and is pretty tasteless, especially to old world palettes. (THey call nine month old cheese “extra sharp.”)
If you go to the specialty stores, you can find imported cheddar in fancy delis, or some places (Trader Joe’s is a good one - xlnt prices) stock farmhouse cheeses made in places like Vermont that are aged as long as two years and have more, what do you call it, “bite.”
Kristin
My first time in the States I ordered Fajitas at a restaurant and was surprised to see grated carrot served with them.
Imagine my further surprise when I discovered that the carrot was actually bright orange cheese. :eek:
You Yanks eat the craziest things. 
(…and don’t get me started on “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt”…)
most scottish cheese seems to b this flourescent orange colour, i always figured it had something to do with caithness power station doing funny things to the cows milk.
mnemosyne, I don’t know what part of Ontario you’re in, but in the cities I’ve lived in (Kingston, Kitchener, and for a little while, Toronto) cheeses that are “normally” white (mozarella, gouda, etc…), are not dyed orange. Cheddar itself is usually available in white if you get the stuff marked as “Old”. Otherwise, it’s orange.
This is not to say that we Ontarians are not crazy, just that if we are crazy, it’s not due to orange mozarella.
Well, the No Frills in Hamilton did have orange Mozarella on the shelf the other day. Truth, its the only time I’ve seen it that way, but it was there. I’m just bitter about the orange curd cheese. They have St.Hubert poutine sauce, but orange cheese. It’s just not right!!
I’m in the UK too; my local Sainsburys has probably twenty different Cheddars, and they’re all a pale yellow colour.
The only dyed cheeses are red leicester and double gloucester (which is yellow). But I’m reliably informed that up North red Cheddar is traditional and red Cheshire is sometimes seen. I suspect even there you’d only get one or two varieties of red Cheddar, as it wouldn’t be worth while making red versions of all the more upmarket Cheddars.
Strange, I always called that cheese color yellow, not orange. Unless it sits out for a few hours, and kinda dries out. Then it turns orangish.
I’m a UK person, with something of a fondness for cheese. And I’ve lived Up North for quite a while, without seeing any red Cheddar there…
Cheddar is a pale yellow colour, darkening somewhat as it matures. Red Leicester and Double Gloucester are usually orange, Red Leicester being much more markedly so. Cheshire cheese is a paler brownish-pink colour (not far off [Caucasian] flesh colour). And there’s a Shropshire Blue, which resembles Stilton, except that Stilton is pale yellow with blue veins, while Shropshire Blue is orange with blue veins. (I think it’s Shropshire… whichever county it is, it tastes OK).
And there’s Windsor Red, which has deep red marbling all the way through - but that’s produced by steeping it in port.
That’s all the red and orange British cheeses I can remember off the top of my head, anyway… there may well be others. (But red Cheddar is definitely a new one on me… live and learn).