Through all these years fermenting vegetables, I have often wondered why there is so little a tradition of this kind of food preservation in Britain. Did the prevalence of beer easily make malt vinegar available for vinegar pickling? Perhaps the relatively mild winters meant less of a hunger gap than in colder climes eastward? Maybe the early entrance of rural workers into a wage economy cause an earlier loss of indigenous food traditions? Might there be foodways left to be discovered? I’d like to believe this last, but I don’t have an answer.
I scour old cookbooks and find not much– perhaps an occasional mention of making fizzy drinks with “yeast” (which of course could so easily be wild rather than derived from baking and wine making) — elderflower champagne, for example, or bottled drinks of burdock and dandelion, or nettle. But these are sugar ferments, and different from preserving in brine with bioactive bacteria– i.e. sauerkraut, kimchi, cucumber pickles. Somewhere in Hannah Glasse I once read a reference to wedges of cabbage in salt brine– but that didn’t feel like a common cultural practice.
It was a thrill when I learned about Beetroot Stout, a delicious, nourishing, medicinal vegetable-based cocktail. When I queried Glyn Hughes of the incredible site The Foods of England Project, he responded that the only thing that came to mind for him was Potato Cheese (to England– only hypothetically– via Germany):

Enter a caption
http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/potatocheese.htm/ Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette – Thursday 19 July 1855
The immediate association was with Kishk, a Middle Eastern cultured milk and bulgur wheat ferment, which I’d read about in Sandor Katz’s books Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation. Two summers ago I tried to make Kishik (the names vary through different regions and translations, also “Kashk”) following the method in The Gaza Kitchen. My disks turned mouldy. I reckon the relatively chilly, damp air of a Welsh summer just wasn’t dry enough to let the ferment dessicate quickly enough to beat the rot. From this experience I believe having the artificial heat from a kitchen radiator in the winter helped the experiment this time to succeed.
POTATO CHEESE a la The Foods of England Project
I boiled and mashed a potato, and added several tablespoons of milk kefir.
Here’s a close-up of the early days:
I woke up on Day 3 to find the surface of the ferment blooming in this beautiful, vermiculated Geotrichum Candidum, tentatively identified by my Instagram friend Claudia of Urban Cheese Craft. Because this fungus is common in cheese making, I thought of it as a good thing. Hmmmmm.
…Though when I peeled it back, and realised it was just a surface feature, I worried a bit that it would slow the evaporation underneath in a project in which drying-out was the ultimate goal (unlike with cheese making proper)…. because I was emulating Kishk … but I realise in retrospect had we eaten this “cultured potato” at this point, it would have been more of a cheese-like substitute…
So with a bit of trepidation, unsure of myself, I stirred it all together (rather than remove the surface) and left the bowl near the radiator, and under a tea towel.:
On Day 11 the potato mixture felt dry enough to form patties, or disks, and I wrapped them gently in absorbent cloth, but let them air a bit too.
And nothing untoward was happening….
And by day 14 they felt fully hardened and I felt the Potato Cheese experiment to be successful…. A ferment on a carbohydrate with the goal to extend a milky cheesy perfume into the time of year with less milk and cheese…
So now I have my savoury fermented potato “Potato Cheese,” — smells cheesy in a good way — and I feel ready to experiment. I can only think of it as a substitute for Parmesan– maybe grate it over a dish where I might use a hard Italian cheese, or perhaps throw it into a soup such as Minestrone for that little extra thickening or umami sensation. I’m thinking, because it smells reminiscent of Nutritional Yeast, to search through vegan recipes to understand how that ingredient is really used. How would YOU use it? Am most interested in reader suggestion…. And truly interested in anyone’s comments or observations about any part of the process…
Annie,
I’m a bit thick on tweeting and face booking wordpress documents. Can you tell me how to do this with your blogs?
Thanks
P
Thank you Pam, you are so sweet! Um, perhaps at the bottom there will (should be) symbols for FB and Twitter, and then you just press them and follow instructions? Or you can cut and paste the http link and then repaste it into a FB or Twitter posting box? xxx
Or you could just retweet my Twitter tweet.
What an interesting experiment. Have you tried it out yet? I wonder if it thickens as well as adds flavour, as it’s potato-based?
Great experiment – thanks for sharing it with us. I will try but probably with whey from making yogurt. Only then, if it works, will I have any idea what I’ll do with it.
[…] Source: Potato Cheese: A 19th Century English Ferment? […]
Clobber (a fermented milk product similar to skyr) may be more well known in Appalachia but has its roots in England (specifically, the Border region). More broadly, looking at the ferments of that region would probably give you a hint about the ferments of England (they also carried over the cabbage wedge ferment).
Yes you are right! I didn’t at all go into dairy ferments, and there are Scottish ones too! Thank you for your comment 🙂
I thought to truely make it vegan , maybe try fermented chasew yogurt instead of a dairy based yogurt.
Good idea.
Do you think that would work with sweet potato, or other starchy root vegetables as well? Thanks 😉
I am tempted to try it with sweet potato too! I think it could work although the fermentation rate might be different from white potatoes.
Yes, that ‘s what I thought, and that the sugar might change things. Interesting! Thanks for you interest and keep in touch.
Sounds like an interesting ferment. I will have to try this. I was just wondering last night if there was a ferment other than vodka for potatoes. I was reading on WordPress and found this. How fortuitous. Have a great day.
Hi Ravenlaughing. Thanks for commenting. There is a famous South American potato ferment– I have never seen or tried it– called Tocosh. Easy to find bits of info on the web. If you make it, let me know 🙂
I’ve started reading up on Tocosh. Doesn’t sound very appetizing, so I will have to give it some consideration. 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing!
This my new “exotic” fermentation project!
I used leftover active whey from my last batch of raw milk cheese (knowing it’s full of Geotrichum) as a starter culture instead of kefir. I’m 4 days in and the Geotrichum blooms a beautiful white mat over the potato. I tasted a spoonful of this “work in progress” young cheese and am pleasantly surprise. It’s so wonderfully tangy and creamy! The flavor and texture remind me of “poi” — the Polynesian cultured taro dish.
This is exciting! Let me know how it continues 🙂
It turns out really well. I started eating it around day 12 and it continues to get funky and delicious (more tender) over the days. I have been monitoring it daily and just finished the whole batch.
Really glad to hear.
I am so excited to try this!!! Thank you. 🙂
I stumbled upon your article as I was looking for some sort of “potato cheese,” something without milk (I’m vegan)
A few weeks ago, I inadvertly left some potatoes inside my backpack in a hot environment. Days later I started to notice a “cheese smell” (without having cheese around). Later I discovered the fermenting potatoes. I had to wash everything and (without really thinking about it) threw the “potato paste” to the trash.
However, now that I think about it, I want to know if there is any way to make “potato cheese” (that thing smelled just like it) without using milk products.
Thanks,
How interesting re the smell! You might be interested in this new and exciting wave of fermenting odd things with Koji (a mold traditionally used in Japan). I recommend a book called Koji Alchemy. Stay in touch about your potato cheese experiments 🙂 Annie
Hi! I am trying this potato cheese out now. Thanks for the recipe! I saw it in “Nourishing Traditions” originally and upon googling, found your recipe which takes it a few steps further in a direction I was interested in exploring. I am about a week in and it is starting to grow mold. I know cheese grows mold, so I think that is okay but wanted to check if yours did as well? Also how did you like it!? Curious to know how to it tastes… even if strange it’s fun to try out!
Hello, thanks for writing! I will be interested to hear how it works for you. That experiment for me was so long ago I don’t remember so much but… yes it did grow a mold that looked “vermiculated” so I thought it seemed cheese like. It’s interesting because now I’ve become an avid fermenter of tofu which has a kind of blue-cheesy taste , quite pungent and sharp and delicious, which also reminds me of a back taste to that potato “cheese.” Now I am going to look it up in Nourishing Traditions…. OMG, thinking about it, I am going to try the potato cheese with koji….
Ooohh let me know how it turns out with koji! And please send the link to that tofu if you have it up, I’d love to try it – sounds so delicious. Sadly I think I am going to abandon my potato cheese experiment 😦 I don’t have much experience with ferments that mold and don’t know enough to know what is good/bad. Hopefully yours works out!