On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 01:07:05 GMT, Cymru Llewes >
wrote:

>On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 14:56:34 +0100, Alf Christophersen wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 22:13:45 -0600, Alan wrote:
>>
>>>Now, my question: Is ANY cheese naturally orange in color?
>>
>> Don't think so. Even cheddar made here in Norway is orange-yellowish
>> in color. Do not know what they use for coloring. Should occur on the
>> declaration, so maybe I'll check tomorrow.
>
>Cheddar cheese before it became common practice to add annatto
>varied in colour due to the grass at the cows ate. Spring grass is richer
>in beta carotene so the milk was a deeper colour and so was the cheese.
>Consumers assumed that the deeper colour meant more milk fat and therefore
>richer cheese.
>
>I suppose that a cow that was fed just carrots would produce an orange
>cheese. Anyone with a cow willing to test the hypothesis?

But *why* orange cheese? I spent a lot of time Googling yesterday and
gave up. I mean, why would a more richly-colored cheese be desirable?
The questions of beta-kerosene is rather recent, and much cheese
(Cheddar, Gloucester, etc.) has apparently been colored with annatto
for quite some time. More milkfat? I've read that wartime (WWI) oleo
came with dye pellets to knead in to make the (presumably white) fat
look more like butter. Are people strange, or what? :-)