Blue cheese mold would form. According to legend, Roquefort was discovered when a youth, eating a lunch of bread and ewes' milk cheese, abandoned his meal in a nearby cave after seeing a beautiful girl in the distance. When he returned months later, the mold ("Penicillium roqueforti") had transformed his cheese into Roquefort. Gorgonzola is one of the oldest known blue cheeses, having been created around 879 AD, though it is said that it did not actually contain blue veins until around the 11th century. Stilton is a relatively new addition becoming popular sometime in the early 1700s. Many varieties of blue
Stilton cheese three counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and must use pasteurised local milk. The manufacturers of Stilton cheese in these counties applied for and received Protected Geographical Status (PDO) in 1996. Stilton cheese cannot be produced in the village that gave the cheese its name. Stilton village is not in the three permitted counties; it is in the administrative county of Cambridgeshire, and in the historic county of Huntingdonshire. The Original Cheese Company applied to Defra to amend the Stilton PDO to include the village but the application was rejected in 2013. To be called "Blue Stilton", a cheese must: