The Five on Ada’s Counter

People ask what is in the box, and the honest answer is that it depends on the box. But the cheeses themselves do not change from week to week, because Ada has never seen the point of a rotating cast. Five cheeses, chosen so that between them they cover the ground: soft and hard, cow and sheep and goat, mild and blue, young and very old. Here they are, in the order you might eat them.

Baron Bigod

A soft cheese from Fen Farm at Bungay, on the Suffolk side of the Waveney, made in the style of a Brie de Meaux from the raw milk of the farm’s own Montbéliarde cows. It is, as far as anyone can tell, the only cheese of its kind made in Britain from raw milk on the farm where the milk is produced, which is the way it was always done in France and is now rarely done anywhere.

Young, it is clean and buttery. Given a week in a cool place it softens from the rind inward and turns earthy, with a smell of mushrooms and damp wood that some people find alarming and everyone else finds wonderful. Ada cuts it so that you have a little of both. Let it sit out for an hour before eating and it will tell you when it is ready.

In every box.

Spenwood

A hard sheep’s milk cheese from Village Maid at Riseley in Berkshire, made by Anne Wigmore since the 1980s and named for Spencers Wood, the village up the road. It is aged for about six months, which gives it a dry, slightly crystalline texture and a flavour that starts nutty and finishes sweet, in the manner of a young pecorino.

This is the quiet one. It never dominates a plate and it is the piece that has gone by morning. If you have never much liked sheep’s cheese, start here; if you have, you already know.

In every box.

Cashel Blue

Ireland’s first farmhouse blue, made by the Grubb family at Beechmount near Fethard in County Tipperary since 1984, from the milk of their own cows. Ada thinks of it as the blue for people who think they don’t like blue: the salt and the bite are there, but they arrive wrapped in cream, and the finish is soft rather than sharp.

It changes more than most cheeses with age. At six weeks it is firm and fresh; at three months it is spoonable. Ours comes somewhere in between, which is where the Grubbs say they like it best. Eat it last, with the sweeter half of the chutney.

In every box.

The goat’s cheese

A whole, small soft goat’s cheese, medium in strength, fresh and faintly earthy, with a thin rind that you eat. It is here to change the rhythm: after the cow and the sheep, something brighter. It is the cheese to start with if you like a clean, lemony beginning, and the one to keep until last if you don’t.

Being small and whole, it keeps its shape and its composure for a day or two longer than a cut piece, so if you are stretching a box over an evening and a breakfast, this is the one that will wait.

In the Indulgent Traveller’s box and the Grand Ada.

Quicke’s Vintage Cheddar

From Home Farm at Newton St Cyres in Devon, where the Quicke family has farmed for some five hundred years and made cheddar for most of that time. The wheels are wrapped in cloth and aged for around two years, which is longer than almost anyone else bothers with, and it shows: a deep, savoury, almost brothy flavour, a crumble that gives way to cream, and a finish that goes on for a while after you have stopped chewing.

This is what cheddar was before the word came to mean a block in a plastic sleeve. It needs nothing at all, though a cracker is permitted.

In the Grand Ada.

On the crackers and the chutney

Two things you will find in every box that are not cheese, and which matter more than their billing suggests. The crackers are plain by design; a cheese this good does not want competition. The chutney is seasonal and made to go with the cheeses rather than in spite of them. One of our earliest customers wrote that the chutney was his personal highlight, which Ada took well.

Which box, then

Three cheeses for two people and an evening: the Classic London Cheese Box. Four cheeses with the goat’s cheese to change the rhythm: the Indulgent Traveller’s Cheese Box. All five and no need for dinner: the Grand Ada. Each is cut and packed to order the day it is delivered, and each comes with the crackers, the chutney, and a note from Ada on looking after what you have not finished, the long version of which is here.

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A soft note before you go

If you’d like a gentle companion as you explore London — someone who can suggest a peaceful street, a nearby garden, or an interesting detour — Buttons, our endlessly curious shop cat, is always happy to help.

And if you find yourself in a hotel room in Zones 1 to 3 with an evening in front of you, Ada will happily send a box to your door before ten.