Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Cheesy cultural appropriation

I saw this for sale recently when I was looking for cheese to add to burgers. I was intrigued so I thought I would give it a go.


I'm pleased to report it worked really well as burger cheese in a cheeseburger. But there is a little nagging feeling that this is cultural appropriation of some kind - especially since this "Welsh rarebit" cheese was made in Leicestershire!

Rarebit has been a Welsh staple dish for so long that a joke about Welsh people eating toasted cheese is in an Elizabethan era joke book that Shakespeare seems to have used as one of the many sources he borrowed from. 

The joke is that at a Welsh wedding there were ten cooks because each guest toasted their own cheese. Those hilarious Elizabethans!

Anyway, Tesco has brought Welsh rarebit into the modern era of packaged sliced cheese. I liked it. I'll probably buy it again despite my misgivings about this culinary cultural appropriation.

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