Eating 'five counties' cheese can prove difficult for the indecisive. Do you eat it layer by layer, in the same way many people eat the creamy layer then the two biscuits of an Oreo cookie? If you do, how do you choose the order? Do you eat them from palest to darkest (or in reverse), or starting at the top of the wedge and munching your way through to bottom? Or do you bite into it willy-nilly, tasting two or perhaps three different cheeses in one mouthful? (You'd have to have an extremely large mouth to bite off all five cheeses at once.)
It doesn't really matter, because the five-layered cheese looks more interesting than it tastes; one wonders if the cheeses were selected more for the attractive way their colours go together than for the way the flavours complement each other. It's not that the five cheeses aren't delicious on their own - when purchased and tasted separately, it's clear they have different flavours and textures. But after being layered and sealed in an inedible wax coating, the flavours seem to just blend into one another, making them indistinct. This can be used to the cheese's advantage in the same way most fondue recipes call for three different types of cheese: it gives the fondue roundness and complexity. But if you were to melt and mix the five counties cheese into a sauce or dip, it would ruin the attractive colour strata.
As you've probably figured out, five counties is more a cheese product than a type of cheese. It's made from five traditional British cheeses (each of which is usually from a different county) but the choice varies from producer to producer. They all seem to use cheddar as one of the layers and we've found none that use another world-famous British cheese, stilton, probably because its strong flavour would overwhelm the others.
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