A new 90 minute Voluminous: ‘Long and Love-Kraft’. This letter features a long discussion of the fave Lovecraft nibble… cheese! See also 2020’s Voluminous: Cats, Cheese and Hawaiians episode for more nibbles at the topic.
From another letter on the topic…
A decade ago I was greatly interested in tracking down some of the idioms I encountered in New York. For example – the phrase “store cheese” – which my palate preferences caused me to run up against continually. In southern New England the expression is – or at least was in 1924 – unknown. Our principal cheeses are the large traditional sort – about a foot thick and two feet in diameter – and the modern tinfoil package or process cheeses run second. Thus the word “cheese” without any trimmings suggests to our mind one of the large ordinary old-fashioned sort. When we allude to the new sort we usually say “process cheese”, “package cheese”, or (in the case of the long tinfoiled loaf) “loaf cheese”. Well – in New York it is just the other way around. The word “cheese” in itself suggests to New Yorkers the modern tin-foil brands, and if you ask for “a pound of mild white cheese” a Manhattan grocer will begin to chop you off a section of a Kraft tin-foiled loaf. These process cheeses (they are artificially cured and not aged) are the principal kinds used in the metropolis, and in many shops no others are obtainable. And where they do keep the standard old-fashioned sort, they call them “store cheeses”. Thus when I was in Brooklyn I used to have to ask for “medium white store cheese” if expected to get my usual kind.
And this was probably a Tom & Jerry-style ‘mousetrap’ wedge, cut from a wheel with a wire and wrapped in grease-proof paper, rather than the rectangular and vacuum-packed plastic block of today…
large wheels of cheddar cheese — often called simply “store cheese” — were kept under glass and sliced into one- or two- pound wedges for customers.” (New England)
Lovecraft’s friend Vrest Orton built an enduring mini-industry in Vermont around such things, which was perhaps even partly inspired by Lovecraft’s antiquarianism and tastes…
I wanted to revive an authentic, old-fashioned, rural operating store [‘The Vermont Country Store’, with] the same merchandise: New England foods, store cheese and crackers, bolts of calico cloth, kitchen knives and cooking forks
Orton even kept alive a certain old British traditions in cheese, something Lovecraft would surely have approved of…
one of the better sage cheeses I have eaten is sold by Vrest Orton, a Vermonter famous for his efforts to preserve the verities of his native state. Mr. Orton does not hesitate to tell his customers that the shipments he makes are “simply our good aged Cheddar with leaves of real sage for flavor.” Among British food lovers for hundreds of years this kind of sage cheese has been a traditional part of the Christmas celebration all over England.” (The World of Cheese)
In the Voluminous letter “York State Medium” is stated as being Lovecraft’s favoured cheese-board staple in 1930. This can be found in recipes as “York State cheese” into the 1970s, a full-fat cheese. But perhaps he was abbreviating for ‘New York State Cheese’, in which case it turns out there’s a complete book on the topic…
The Voluminous letter, as read, was previously abridged in Selected Letters III. This episode of Voluminous also gives an account of the process of acquisition of the Long letters for Brown.
The podcast has a small factual error, which I’ve corrected in my post Lovecraft was right, part 459.
