Cheese

Cheese, also known as Red Cheese, Cheese Red, and Tennessee Cheese, is a sweet pimento-type Capsicum annuum pepper associated with Spanish origin and later North American seed circulation. It is named for its historical use in cheese making, where the red pigment and aromatic pepper flavour were used to colour and flavour cheese.

The plant has green foliage and a compact, productive growth habit, commonly reaching about 45 to 61 cm tall. It is grown as a sweet stuffing and fresh-eating pepper, with fruit usually maturing in about 80 days from transplant.

The fruit is small, squat, flattened, and pimento-like, often described as round, apple-type, or cheese-wheel-shaped. Mature pods are about 7.5 cm long, with thick red flesh, a firm wall, and a sweet, candy-like flavour. The form makes it especially suited to stuffing, fresh eating, roasting, pickling, canning, and use where a thick-walled sweet pepper is wanted.

Cheese is a no-heat sweet pepper, with commercial seed sources listing it at 0 SHU. Its culinary value comes from sweetness, flesh thickness, colour, and aroma rather than pungency. The ripe red flesh has historically been important enough that the pepper’s name became tied directly to its cheese-colouring use, giving it a distinct place among old pimento-style sweet peppers.