Lore:Cheese

"Wonderful! Time for a celebration... Cheese for everyone! Wait, scratch that. Cheese for no one. That can be just as much of a celebration, if you don't like cheese. True? You've run a maze like a good little rat, but no cheese for you yet."
—Sheogorath

A variety of cheeses

Cheese (Yoku: Mlou) is a dairy product used as food. It is made when milk ferments and is pressed into a more solid product. The milk used to create cheese can come from various mammalian animals, such as cows, echatere, goats, sheep, giant bats, and even rodents. It may be consumed as part of simple meals with soup, bread, and tea, or with wine in more refined meals. Cheese has alchemical properties, and can be used in potions to fortify willpower, resist paralysis and fire, restore fatigue, or in poisons to damage luck and agility.

It can come in many shapes, such as truckles called cheese wheels, or liquid forms called cheese dips, and can be stored in barrels and crates. Giant rats consume cheese and may infest areas containing it, sometimes being lured by its strong scent. Rats can be subject to experiments where they explore mazes to find a piece of cheese. Cheese wheels laced with poison are sometimes used to lure and kill skeevers.

Culture

Sheogorath gleefully enjoying cheese

Skingrad County is famous for its wines and cheeses. The Border Watch Inn can be found in the town of Borderwatch and is famed for its large collection of cheese, including the rare Olroy Cheese. Breton nobles may have multiple cheese courses at long dinner parties.

The Blue Palace in Solitude employs a royal cheesemonger, a hereditary office. Milk is regularly brought to the palace for inspection and the cheesemonger has exact standards for producing Solitude Eidar.

Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of madness, is quite fond of cheese and will often cater celebrations with it. His followers are subject to many insane conspiracies involving cheese, such as the price of cheese being connected to the Greymarch, or Thadon faking his death to live underground in a house made of cheese. Sometimes they simply hoard or carry large amounts of cheese.

Cheesemancy is an arcane art focused on the manipulation of cheese. Those who practice this art are known as Cheesemancers. While it has a loose connection to the mad inhabitants of the Shivering Isles, its existence is recognized among the common people of Tamriel.

Varieties

Breton

Name	Description	Image
Goat's Milk Cheeses	A variety of goat's milk cheeses are produced by the Bretons of Stormhaven. Unlike some Nordic cheeses made from goat's milk, the High Rock varieties are prized for their moistness.

Giant

Name	Description	Image
Mammoth Cheese	Mammoth Cheese is produced by giants from the mammoths they herd. There are many varieties, such as Sharp, Creamy, Briny, Moldy, Stinky, and Sweet Mammoth Cheese.

Imperial

Name	Description	Image
Blue Cheese	A type of cheese eaten in Cyrodiil.
Cheddar	A type of cheese eaten in Cyrodiil.
Lacquerweb Cheese	Before curds are poured into molds, a web of spun sugar is painstakingly built within them. This shape resembles something like the blood vessels of a creature, and each of its branches are hollow. The curds are poured in and when the cheese is sufficiently hardened a most piquant vinegar is poured into the web. The web dissolves and the cheese is left with remarkable veins of flavor throughout. Known to be served with bay leaves.
Marble Cheese	A type of cheese eaten in Cyrodiil.
Melonrind Cheese	Firm and crumbly, this cheese is named for the curious pockmarking that occurs on the rind after two years of aging.
Olroy Cheese	A rare type of cheese produced in Southern Cyrodiil. It is described as being extremely aromatic, and is kept locked in a case to conceal its powerful aroma.
Sheep's Cheese	Cheese made from sheep milk is known to be produced in Skingrad.

Khajiit

Name	Description	Image
Elsweyr Fondue	Fondue (melted cheese) produced by the Khajiit. This is one of their more savory recipes, but some Khajiit prefer to include moon-sugar.

Nord

Name	Description	Image
Ald Umber	Ald Umber is a cheese produced in Whiterun, whey from curd-pressings is collected and, rather than being discarded, it is combined with cream. This mixture is boiled in a wide, shallow pot over the course of many hours. The liquid becomes solid over time, and, in doing so, it adopts a pale brown color and caramel-like aroma, hence the name "umber."
Barrowost	Barrowost or commonly, barrow-cheese, much resembles the common eidar cheese found throughout the holds of Skyrim. Whereas eidar cheese is aged in cellars or caverns, however, barrowost is exclusively aged in Nordic barrows. Be it from the stagnant air, the endlessly sweating stone, or the magic within the barrow walls, the cheese gains an intense earthy sweetness, punctuated with sharp notes. It is one of Falkreath's most reputed cheeses. Some citizens of Falkreath follow an ancient Nord tradition of "grave curd." According to the practice, a fresh farmer's cheese is interred atop a loved one's coffin. Every year, on the anniversary of the departed's death, the grave curd is exhumed and a fifth of it is consumed by the bereaved.
Bjenost	Bjenost is a cheese eaten almost exclusively by the people of the Pale, who do so to mark the end of winter and the return of spring. Bjenost almost certainly originated among the poor of the hold, though now high and low tables alike enjoy this delicacy. Rinds and crumbs of cheeses that were consumed over the course of the long, dark winter, are then soaked in a tun of ale, which is all stuffed inside the intestines of a slaughtered pig. The bjenost is then hung to dry, to be taken down only at the High Spring Fest. It is sliced into golden disks, said to resemble the sun in springtime.
Eidar	Eidar is a type of cheese eaten by the Nords alongside hearty spit-roasted meats. It has a rich, earthy flavor and creamy texture that are quite conducive to sauces. It is produced by being aged underground and inoculated with the spores of fungus. One notable type of Eidar is Solitude Eidar.
Ghostflesh	Ghostflesh is a cheese produced in Winterhold, where both cow and goat's milk are in short supply. What little is at hand is made into a fresh, soft farmer's cheese. The elderly and the children of the hold, too young to brave the waters of the Sea of Ghosts, spend the day collecting seaweed, which they dry for several weeks. The simple farmer's cheese is smoked over a pile of burning seaweed, imbuing it with an aroma of the sea. It is then baked, being wrapped in a pastry that is composed of flour and horker suet. This permits the brave fisherfolk to eat while working the sea, where often they can only spare one hand at a time. When freshly baked, the molten innards of these dumplings steam and crackle, while the crust remains flaky and light.
Goat Cheese	Goat cheese is produced from goat's milk by the Nords.
Greenedge	Greenedge is a festive cheese of Hjaalmarch. The name of the cheese, derived from the "baskets" of rushes plucked from nearby bogs and woven together, speaks to both its visual appeal and the process of its creation. The cheese is brined and pressed within these baskets, with the latter process imbuing the rind of the normally cream-colored cheese with a verdant hue. The consumption of Greenedge, customarily served at the end of feasts, is something of a spectacle. Young hunters make a game of holding the rush-encased cheese over a flaming torch until its casing burns away and the cheese transforms into a near-molten state. Observers laud veterans of this ordeal for the showmanship they add to this feat, dancing the highly combustible cheese along the torch flame without pausing too long, lest the cheese blacken or their fingers burn. Thus prepared, they flip the hot cheese onto a table and guests immediately plunge bread—or, occasionally, sliced apples—into the melted greenedge. Children find particular joy in the activity, for at this point the cheese's secret contents are revealed—dried fruits and berries, and in wealthier households a single amber plum. The lucky eater that spears the plum before all others is named king of the feast.
Mammoth Cheese	Mammoth Cheese is not produced by Nords and is taken from the camps of giants. It is sometimes found on the tables of Nords and used in Nordic recipes.
Riftwash	Riftwash is a goat cheese with a glassy, violet-black exterior, which belies a pallid and crumbly core. It is pressed to remove much of the water within the cheese, producing a dry cheese, the cheese is washed several times in Riften's famous blackberry mead before being shrouded in wax which has been dyed with blackberry must, a by-product of the city's burgeoning meadworks.
Solitude Eidar	Solitude Eidar is an extremely valued and rare cheese produced in Solitude. Only cows that belonged to the herd of Jarl Svartr, first king of Western Skyrim, can provide milk for the cheese. The royal herd, descended from these cows, is maintained by loyal retainers. Milk arrives regularly in Solitude, where it undergoes inspection by a royal cheesemonger—a hereditary office within the Blue Palace. This connoisseur of dairy has exacting standards for the milk he inspects and only one out of every dozen barrels is deemed fit for the making of Solitude Eidar. The milk curdles in a precise fashion, using a series of hourglasses custom-made for the purpose. Lastly, a crumb of cheese from the previous batch is added into the next one, thus creating an unbroken chain of eidar dating back generations.

Orc

Name	Description	Image
Bitter Goat Cheese	This cheese is an Orc feast staple.
Echatere Cheese	Cheese made from echatere milk. It functions as an aphrodisiac.

Reachman

Name	Description	Image
Doe's Ire	Doe's Ire is a remarkably salty cheese made with goat's milk and flavored with juniper berries. To produce it a goat doe's milk is curdled in the stomach of its own offspring to produce the cheese. The cheese is eaten on feast days dear to the Reachmen. Some say the cheese's salty profile comes from the tears of the doe, whose milk is soured in its offspring's carcass. Patriots of the Reach say the cheese is salty to remind those who eat it of the sorrows that befell the Reach, punishment for unfulfilled destiny.

Redguard

Name	Description	Image
Shrieking Cheese	Redguards craft a cheese with an unusual quirk. They keep the secrets of its culturing process close to heart, but love to surprise foreign guests by serving it. When it is melted to a certain point, it lets loose a scream. In a common dish, small blocks of the cheese are added atop spicy meat as it cooks in an open pot. When it shrieks, it's ready.

Gallery

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  Cheese Wedge (Oblivion)

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  Cheese Wheel (Oblivion)

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  Cheese (Blades)

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  Colovian cheese press

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  Colovian cheese serving

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  Colovian cheese board

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  Grape and cheese board

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  Ashlander Platter, Bread and Cheese

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  A collection of rare Tamrielic cheeses (Oblivion)

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  The Shivering Cheese

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  A Cheesemancer (Legends)

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  Ashlander cheese knife

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  King Jorunn's Automatic Cheesewheel Vivisector

Notes

• Citizens of Tamriel, especially Nords, may carry pieces of cheese on their person.
• Scuttle is a local dish on Vvardenfell that is similar to cheese and made from the flesh of local beetles. It can be cooked alongside saltrice and cheese to make a dish called scuttlerice. Fancy taverns may also serve cheeses and scuttle alongside each other with pan roasted oysters, kwama crisps, and smoked slaughterfish.

See Also

• For game-specific information, see the Daggerfall, Oblivion, Skyrim, Elder Scrolls Online, and Blades articles.

References

Note: The following references are considered to be unofficial sources. They are included to round off this article and may not be authoritative or conclusive.