Next: 1 Mar 2027
St David's Day and Caerphilly
Wales's national day, with cawl, Welsh rarebit and Glamorgan sausages of Caerphilly cheese and leek.
Cheeses for St David's Day and Caerphilly
Saint David, patron of Wales, is remembered on 1 March with leeks and daffodils pinned to coats, school eisteddfodau and parades. The food of the day is Welsh: cawl, the lamb and leek broth; Welsh rarebit, cheese melted with ale and mustard over toast; and Glamorgan sausages, which contain no meat at all but are made of grated Caerphilly cheese, leek and breadcrumbs, rolled and fried. Caerphilly is a young, crumbly, lightly salted cow's-milk cheese, once made for the miners of South Wales, who ate it underground. Farmhouse makers in Wales revived it in the late twentieth century.
The cheeses
Also part of it, and being written: Cheddar cheese (Often used for Welsh rarebit on the day.).
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Background: "Saint David's Day" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Caerphilly: Jon Sullivan, Public domain, source