Say cheese

Cheese. A ripe subject for humor, you might think, but frankly, dear Dewey blog reader, you've come to expect more from us than feeble puns, weary in-jokes, and smug "British" sarcasm ... Haven't you? Okay, maybe not, but in any case all we're going to do here is alert you to the DDC numbers for cheese. For cheese, as we all know, is the king of foods. The number for interdisciplinary works on cheese is 641.373, under 641.37 Dairy and related products in home and family management; works on cheesemaking go in 637.3, under 637 Processing dairy and related products in agriculture and related technologies. If we take a look at the development under 637.35 Varieties [of cheese], we find that the categories of cream cheese, ripened soft cheeses (e.g., Brie, Camembert, Gorgonzola, and Limburger), hard cheeses (e.g., cheddar, Cheshire, Parmesan, Stilton, and Swiss cheeses), and fresh cheeses (e.g., cottage cheese and Mozzarella) have classes to themselves. Why the sudden fascination with cheese, you might inquire (quite fairly, too)? Well, I know it's old news now -- it happened back in May -- but NPR reported it yesterday and we're not picky. Talkin' 'bout the European Union's registration of Feta as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), which gives it the status already enjoyed by Prosciutto di Parma, Jersey Royal potatoes, Newcastle brown ale, and many other excellent foods. To qualify as "Feta" (which means "slice" in Greek), a given cheese must be produced in Greece from a mixture of sheep's and goat's milk. Denmark and Germany, for instance, no longer have the right to call their briny, crumbly curd cheeses "Feta." (But if the product is both made and sold outside the EU, that's okay.) As a semi-hard cheese, Feta doesn't neatly fall into any of the DDC's established categories, so we'd put works on Feta in standing room at 637.35.

Comments

[Chew Chiat Naun]

If 637 is the Dewey number for processing dairy products, can it be any coincidence that to get to the Wensleydale cheese factory, you travel along the M6 and turn off at junction 37? (Click on the map at http://www.wensleydale.co.uk/index.htm, which takes you to multimap.com, and look for the "nearest transport links" box near the bottom of the page.) Coincidence? I think not.

[Chew Chiat Naun]

Correction: the URL for that specific page is http://www.wensleydale.co.uk/centre.htm -- the map is at the bottom right. If only URLs were as easy to remember as Dewey numbers.