Print Resources

Harbutt, Juliet. (1999). Cheese: A Complete Guide to Over 300 Cheeses of Distinction. Toronto: Elan press.
An overview guide to the cheeses of the world, divided into the six main styles of cheese, fresh to hard. Also includes roots of origin and methods of production. Further information is included on the art and science of cheesemaking, along with colour photographs of selections of cheeses and of the cheesemaking process. An invaluable glossary is appended. The clear indexing and design of the book facilitated ease of use when mining for terms.

Jenkins, Steve. (1996). Cheese Primer. New York: Workman Publishing.
This book truly is a cheese primer, covering cheeses from around the world. The book is devoted mostly to artisanal cheeses, with very few factory cheeses even mentioned in passing. His section on the British Isles supplied us with a comprehensive list of English cheeses. He included such information as milk type, moisture content, texture and flavour. A valuable source of information for the creation of our thesaurus.

Lambert, Paula. (2000). The Cheese Lover's Cookbook and Guide: Over 150 Recipes With Instruction on How to Buy, Store, and Serve All Your Favorite Cheeses. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Serving as both a guide and a cookbook, with an excellent series of appended tables of cheeses sorted by texture, flavour/taste, and country of origin. Both the tables and the concise guide to cheese types and characteristics were useful in generating broader terms, and in the organization of term relationships.

Kosikowski, Frank. V. (2002). Cheese. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 9th edition, (Vol. 4, pp 1-7). New York: McGraw-Hill.
A highly informative section in this book on the science and nature of cheese and cheese making. Helped us to understand how the moisture and fat contents affect the cheeses. Also explained the process involved in making a "blue" cheese. Was useful for us in deciding on how the different cheeses should be divided up in creating the thesaurus. This book did not supply us with any terms.

Merryweather, Linda. (1992). The Companion Thesaurus to Food Science and Technology Abstracts. Reading, UK: International Food Information Service.
A detailed thesaurus of food and food production related terminology. Supplied us with preferred spelling of many of our descriptor terms. The scope notes and use/used for references were helpful in creating our thesaurus. When deciding whether to use cheese in the plural or singular, this book was unable to help us. Strangely, while most count words and concepts were plural (e.g. Dairy products) this thesaurus left cheese in the singular. Also the scope note for Cheese Varieties was confusing, as it states it covers "specific types of cheese and cheese from animals other than cows." This thesaurus avoided the problem of capitalization by putting all preferred terms in all-caps.

Rance, Patrick. (1982). The Great British Cheese Book. London: Macmillan London.
A comprehensive exploration of the art, history and practice of cheesemaking in Britain. Divided into three sections; the geographic origins of the cheeses, the making of cheese, and practical advice on the purchasing, storing and selling of cheese. An invaluable tool for the comprehension and compilation of terms for British cheeses. This book was our final arbiter when deciding in which category to classify a cheese.

Ridgway, Judy. (1989). The Carr's Connoisseur's Cheese Guide. Cambridge, England: Martin Books.
This book briefly covers the history and principles of cheese making, nutrition, and an alphabetical descriptive list of selected international cheeses. All cheeses are identified by type of milk, fat content, texture, flavour, manufacturing details, origin, and serving suggestions. Appendices permit access via cheese marks, sheep and goat's milk cheeses, and cheeses by country. Variations are indicated where applicable and see references are provided in the index. The list of English cheeses is considerable, outdone only by the French; a number of variations are included here making it valuable for term selection.
 

Ridgway, Judy. (2004). The Cheese Companion: The Connoisseur’s Guide, 2nd edition. Philadelphia: Running Press.
An excellent A-Z directory of cheeses from around the world. This edition has been entirely updated since the first edition, with the format being drastically altered. This book supplied us with our five divisions for the cheeses based on moisture content: Fresh, Soft, Semihard, Semihard Blue and Hard. Each cheese was listed with its milk type, moisture content, aging time and region. The book was also extremely useful in supplying variations to the different cheese types; similar styles of cheese but differing recipes, such as Derby and Leicester.

Timperley, Carol, & Norman, Cecilia. (1989). The Cheese Book. London: Salamander Books. London: Salamander Books.
A guide to the cheeses of the world divided by style, with tips on consumption and presentation. While primarily an overview of the larger cheese styles, it is unique in its inclusion of colour photographs of the cheeses, which are further accompanied by concise summaries of the related cheese styles. Very useful in the understanding and identification of cheese varieties.

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Electronic Resources

British Cheese Board. (2005). http://www.cheeseboard.co.uk. (March 2 2005).
The self-professed "voice of British cheese", this site was created to promote the consumption of British cheeses. It provides nutritional facts, details of health benefits, suggestions for accompaniments for some cheeses, and information about selected cheesemakers of note. The site showcases 19 types of the "most popular" cheeses. Descriptions of these cheeses are provided and include flavour, texture, age, and some history. The British Cheese Board served as an excellent jumping off point in the early stages of term gathering but didn't offer a very comprehensive listing.

Cheese.com. (2002). http://www.cheese.com. (March 2 2005).
This website offers a database containing 652 types of cheeses from around the world. It can be browsed by name, country, texture, milk used in production, and vegetarian cheeses. Each entry provides brief details concerning flavour, texture, history, colouring, rind and optimum ripening age. This resource will be useful when the thesaurus expands to include British cheeses made from other types of milk.

National Agricultural Library. (2005). Agricultural thesaurus. <http://agclass.nal.usda.gov/agt/agt.htm>. (February 25, 2005).
The NAL Agricultural Thesaurus was created by the National Agricultural Library in the United States. It was created for the index of materials and aiding in retrieval in various agricultural information systems. An interesting index, but of little value in the creation of our thesaurus as it was very US-centric. The NAL Thesaurus also did several strange things when choosing relations between terms. For example, the thesaurus uses terms like "soft cheeses" or "hard cheeses" as well as types like "cream cheese" and "cheddar cheese". But instead of "cream cheese" being a type of "soft cheese", a narrower term, it is listed as a being "related term". This is the same with "cheddar" and "hard". It appears as if "soft" or "hard" are almost catch-all terms for types of cheese that are not mentioned specifically. Our group found this to be quite confusing and unexpected.

Neal's Yard Dairy. (2003). http://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk. (March 2 2005).
Neal's Yard Dairy is a well-known English wholesaler and maker of cheese and other dairy products. Established in 1979, Neal's Yard has had more than 25 years of experience working with cheeses and area cheese makers. Their extensive listing of cheeses includes types regularly found in stock. Information provided about each cheese offers its specific origins, the type, type of rennet, milk used, variations, and a description of flavour and composition. As they are a UK source they are an excellent resource for harvesting terms specific to our thesaurus. Sheep and goat's milk cheeses are included among their stock which will prove useful as the Thesaurus grows.

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Software Used

This artisanal website and thesaurus was hand-crafted with pride by Jamie Anderson, Kristy Hennings, and Catherine Ricard, using 1st Page 2000 and MultiTes 2005 indexing software.
 

fine print

In case you are still wondering, this entire website and thesaurus is a work of fiction. We are making no judgements on the quality of Canadian cheese, the Canadian Government or cheese importers.