Lucy’s May 2026 Cheese of the Month: Pyghtle

We all tried this cheese last September at the market when Emily Tydeman sent us some to try at our ‘Grantees Market’ highlighting the cheeses being made by our Cheesemaker grantees. It was not for sale as it was the end of the season for making this fresh Ewe’s milk cheese at the farm in Suffolk, but boy oh boy was it delicious. Now, it’s here, it’s in season and it’s wonderful!

This is an unusual cheese as it is a sheep milk log – not a goat log, but a sheep milk log and there are not many of those about. Sheeps’ milk is much sweeter and richer in flavour than goats’ and so if you are not keen on that slightly tart flavour of fresh goats’ milk you are in for a surprise with this cheese.

Made from the milk of local sheep that graze outside all year round, Pyghtle (old Suffolk word for small enclosure) is a lactic set cheese  – this means the slightly warm milk is left much longer to ferment and separate into curds and whey in its own time than non-lactic set cheeses (24-48 hours rather than a couple of hours in non-lactic set cheeses). This delicate curd is then ladled into moulds and after another day it is unmoulded, salted and left to mature for about a week.

It can be eaten then, and the flavours are young, fruity and fresh, but Emily recommends eating Pyghtle at 3 weeks old when the cheese develops a more savoury flavour and the interior changes from chalky to fudgy with a rind that I find utterly irresistible. This is truly a very special cheese indeed.

Emily can’t make it to the market but new trader ‘Little Shop of Cheese’ will be bringing Pyghtle to Cheesewick, so look out for Nicola’s stall on Sunday.

Pyghtle

Made by Emily Tydeman at Broughton Hall Dairy, Suffolk
Milk: Raw sheep’s milk
Age: 2 – 3 weeks