OLD CHEESEMAKERY - PASSENDALE
Oude Kaasmakerij – Cheese Making Museum in Flanders
Riddle me
this – What does a naked Egyptian queen have to do with
cheese? Stumped? Thinking of a dirty story? If traveling through the
fields of West Flanders in Belgium, surrounded by the monuments and memorials
to the devastating brutal folly battles of the First World War (see World
War I Trail Flanders) you might come across the answer at the Oude Kaasmakerij – the
Old Cheesemakery. The village of Passendale (Passchendaele) is known
for both its place in war history and for Passendale Cheese, a semi-soft
cheese made from cow's milk, shaped in rounds with a brown crust dusted
with white mould from aging, one of Belgium's best known varieties.
With the outbreak
of World War I the Spruytte Family fled from the sleepy village of
Passchendaele to Normandy, where they ran a restaurant during
the war. Germaine Spruytte learned how to make cheese of a type known
as Pont l’Evêque. When she and her husband Romain Donck returned
to Belgium after the war, they began a family cheese business on farmland
reclaimed from the bombings of the war, with milk from a cooperative
of area farmers. The cheese became very popular and they needed to build
a production factory, located just next to the farm.In 1936,
to make improvements in the product, they brought in a master cheese-maker
from
Switzerland. The next world war was a little tough on the cheese business
as well. In 1949, cheese making was moved to a facility it in the town.
A variation of the original cheese was renamed for the town in 1978,
becoming the Passendale Cheese brand. Cheese is no longer made at the
old factory, abandoned in 1963, but the facility was given named as
a national monument and in 2003 opened as a cheese making museum.
The
Old Cheesemakery (Oude Kaasmakerij in Dutch) just outside the village
of Passchendaele
a few miles from the war museum of the Ypres Salient
and cemetery at Tyne Cot (see Passiondale
1917 WWI Museum) is set up as the
creamery cheese dairy would have been in the 1930s, presenting a tour
of the classic cheese making processes, from the mixing of milk with
culture, molding in cheese cloth, and aging. Tour guides explain the
process of many steps, leading through exhibits of different cheeses
from around
the
world.
The tour ultimately leads to the cheese tasting room and restaurant.
At
the entrance you’ll find a giant globe with the continents
made of pieces of cheese, and along the way encounter the nude
Cleopatra bathing
in milk. She has rather become the symbol of the Old Cheesemakery.
There are no actual images of what Cleopatra actually looked like,
aside from
one badly damaged profile on a coin, but the famous Queen of the Nile
has always been imagined as a great beauty and is here represented
as a voluptuous nude mannequin in a bath of donkey milk (it apparently
doesn’t curdle as much as cow milk), which
she reportedly
bathed in daily to maintain her silky skin. What does Cleopatra have
to do with Belgian cheese? Not much, but she does make an entertaining
museum
display - relating the importance of milk through history. Fortunately
the cheese is made with moo milk, not the other kind, and if you have
kids you’d rather not view a bathing nubile nude, she is partly
hidden behind a curtain.
Visiting Oude Kaasmakerij
The Old CheeseMakery
Museum has a tea room and restaurant. Cheese tasting is €1.75. Entrance
fee is €4 for adults (over 26), Seniors and Youth €3.50,
Children under 6 are free. Cheese tasting is €1.75. The museum is
Tuesday- Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm Fridays 1 pm to 5 pm, from mid February
to the end of November. In June, July and August open daily from 10 to
5:30 pm. Closed in December and January. The Oude Kaasmakerij cheese
factory museum is about 15 minutes from Ypres by car. Follow the N38
to the Passendale Church, turn left, past the old village hall. At the
end of this street, turn left into s' Graventafelstraat.
After 2 kilometers ook for the waving Passendale flags. © Bargain
Travel Europe
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Web Info
Oude
Kaasmakerij
Visit Flanders
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SEE ALSO:
ST GEORGE’S WWI MEMORIAL CHURCH - YPRES
HALVE MANN BREWERY TOUR – BRUGES
BRUSSELS MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MUSEUM
GRAVENSTEEN - COUNT'S CASTLE - GHENT
