Moorhouse Lemon Cheese

Butter, eggs, and lemons, what else could better evoke the healthiness of the countryside than this delicious traditional desert topping?

This famous Yorkshire brand of lemon cheese gets the full idyllic treatment in this TV ad from 1966. With mum baking in the kitchen with the help of her daughter, and an Arcadian countryside scene on view through the open door, this modest preserve is associated, like many similar products at the time, with homely family life and healthy living (never mind the sugar).

This family business, like many similar ones in the Victorian era, started out from humble beginnings when William Moorhouse founded a small grocery in 1886 in a house on Lofthouse Place in Leeds. Shortly afterwards, on a visit to a farm in Swillington, he was given some ‘lemon cheese’, and, on acquiring the recipe, produced it himself to sell and supply other local shops. The business grew, moving into jam, marmalade, mincemeat, and Christmas puddings. It was taken over by Schweppes in 1959, along with jam makers Chivers and Hartleys; and after merging with Cadbury in 1969, they closed their factory in Beeston in Leeds 1972. Meanwhile, the difference between lemon curd and lemon cheese continues to confuse.