Wensleydale cheese substitutes

A traditional Northern English cow's-milk cheese, pale, moist and loosely knit so it crumbles readily.

Best for

cheese and fruit cake, cheeseboards, crumbling over salads, Lancashire and Wensleydale cheese scones, cheese on apple pie, ploughman's lunch

Prep

Keep it cold and crumble it by hand. Bring it to room temperature for twenty minutes before serving on a board.

As close as substitution gets. The texture is effectively identical, that slightly damp, buttery crumble that falls apart under a knife, and both are made young enough to keep a clean fresh dairy flavour rather than an aged one. The small difference is in acidity: crumbly Lancashire carries a slightly stronger lactic tang, a touch more of the fresh-yoghurt note, and a shade more salt, so a plate of cheese and fruit cake made with it tastes a little sharper against the sweetness. Most people would not identify the swap. Avoid tasty or aged Lancashire, which is firmer and much stronger and behaves more like a cheddar.

A young Welsh cow's-milk cheese, white, moist and mildly salty with a lemony freshness.

Best for

cheeseboards, salads, Welsh rarebit, crumbling over soup, grilling on toast, cheese and pickle

Prep

Crumble cold for salads, or slice while chilled if you need it to stay in one piece.

An excellent match and often easier to find than Wensleydale outside Yorkshire. It has the same pale colour, the same moist crumble and the same gentle character, and if anything a slightly cleaner citrus note. It is a little saltier than Wensleydale, noticeable if you are eating it plain, and it is very slightly firmer near the rind, which means it holds together a fraction better if you need to slice it for a sandwich. One useful difference is that Caerphilly grills and toasts well without going oily, so it is the better pick if the cheese is going under a grill.

One of the oldest English cheeses, dense, crumbly and distinctly salty, sold white or coloured orange.

Best for

cheeseboards, cheese and fruit cake, crumbling over salads and baked potatoes, cheese sauce, ploughman's lunch

Prep

Crumble cold. Reduce or omit added salt anywhere it is going into a cooked dish.

A good and traditional swap, with a slightly different personality. Cheshire is a touch drier and more granular than Wensleydale, crumbling into shorter, chalkier pieces, and it is noticeably saltier with a mineral, almost savoury edge that comes from the salt marsh pastures it is associated with. That extra salt is welcome against something sweet such as fruit cake but can push a salad or a cheese sauce over the line, so hold back the salt elsewhere in the dish. The orange-coloured version tastes the same as the white but looks quite unlike Wensleydale on a board.

A cheddar aged only a few months, still pale, mild and relatively moist.

Best for

cheese and apple pie, sandwiches, cheese scones, cheese on toast, cheese sauce, cheeseboards at a pinch

Prep

For a crumbled effect, freeze the block for ten minutes and then break rather than slice, though it will still come away in chunks.

The everywhere-available answer, and it depends on how young a cheddar you can get. A mild white cheddar is in the same broad flavour territory, clean and milky with a mild tang, but the manufacturing gives it a firmer, denser, waxier body, so it slices and grates rather than crumbling, and a cheeseboard using it looks and eats quite differently. It also melts far more smoothly than Wensleydale, which is an advantage in sauces and a disadvantage if you wanted distinct crumbles to survive baking. Avoid mature or extra-mature cheddar, which is far too sharp and savoury to stand in for a young Wensleydale.

Fresh white crumbling cheeses, feta brined and tangy, queso fresco mild and milky.

Best for

salads, crumbling over roast vegetables, grain bowls, topping soup

Prep

Rinse feta and pat thoroughly dry. Crumble either by hand at the last moment so it does not weep into the dish.

Reach for these when the crumble is what you need and the specific flavour is not. Feta has almost exactly the right texture, and rinsing the block under cold water for ten seconds and patting it dry removes a good deal of the surface brine, but it is still much saltier and considerably tangier than Wensleydale, so a salad made with it tastes sharper and more assertive. Queso fresco is the better match for the mildness, having that same soft milky sweetness, but it is wetter and under-salted, so crumble it and season it lightly. Neither belongs on a Yorkshire cheeseboard, and neither works with fruit cake, where the point is a mild cheese meeting a sweet crumb.

A homemade version of the fruited Wensleydale sold at Christmas.

Best for

Christmas cheeseboards, salads, cheese and biscuits, stuffing for chicken

Prep

Chop the fruit small, mix through crumbled cheese, press into a ramekin lined with cling film and chill for a few hours.

Wensleydale with cranberries is simply young Wensleydale with dried fruit worked through it, so you can put it together yourself. Take crumbly Lancashire, Caerphilly or a young white cheddar, crumble it into a bowl, and fold through finely chopped dried cranberries at about a tablespoon per 100g, pressing the mixture together lightly if you want it to hold. The result is a little looser than the shop version, which is pressed into a block, and the cranberries stay chewier because they have not had time to take up moisture from the cheese, so leave it wrapped in the fridge overnight if you can. Dried apricots or dried cherries work the same way.