The Wife of Bath Remarries

The Wife of Bath was a lusty woman with strong appetites so I was intrigued recently to come a across an English cheese named after the bawdy Chaucer character. Truth be told, the Wife – or Wyfe as Chaucer spelled it – was my very favourite character in the Canterbury Tales. Five times widowed, intelligent and independently wealthy thanks to her dead husbands, she was a medieval clothes horse who was really on the pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral to socialize and taste all of life’s earthly pleasures. She was putting herself out there, so to speak, and you have to admire a gal for that!

In her lactic form, the Wyfe of Bath is handmade with organic milk by the Bath Soft Cheese Co. using its own herd on a farm in Kelston near Bath, England. Owner Graham Padfield had been producing it in relative obscurity until 2005 when the product won a nationwide cheese taste test in Britain. It is now available at Tesco and Sainsbury’s supermarkets so the modern Wyfe of Bath, like its namesake, is out there making its way across Britain feeding the appetites of lusty cheese lovers everywhere.

The semi-hard cheese has a chewy texture and a fresh, smooth taste with a just a hint of sweetness and creamy finish. The cheesemakers describe it as “redolent of buttercups and water meadows.”

Given her proclivity for marriage, I decided the Wyfe would be best enjoyed paired up but with a slightly more conservative partner. I considered a tangy marmalade or a fruit jelly but, in the end, I opted for a gooseberry puree because, in my mind, gooseberries are as quintessentially British as Pimms and clotted cream.

There is something old-fashioned about gooseberries but, for some reason, the British have a soft spot in their hearts for this tart little fruit. Maybe it’s because of where it grows – in the hedgerows and copses of the pastoral English landscape – that evoke patriotic images of God, queen and country. Maybe it reminds people of running wild in the countryside on childhood summer holidays or of visiting their jam-making grannies. Whatever the reason, my marriage of the prim gooseberry and the bouncy Wyfe was a tasty success.

I purchased the Wyfe of Bath at Jacobson’s Gourmet Concepts in Ottawa. My gooseberry puree of choice is available for purchase online from The Fine Cheese Co. in Bath, England or you can make up a batch of your own during gooseberry season by mixing 2 handfuls of fresh gooseberries (trimmed) and 1 or 2 tablespoons of sugar in a saucepan and heating the mixture until the sugar has dissolved and the gooseberries have softened. You may have to add a bit of water to adjust the consistency. For a nice contrast with the cheese, use the darker gooseberries, rather than the light green ones, if available. Allow to cool before serving.