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Introduction
The story of clotted cream is one that, in part, belongs to every farming family in the south-west of England. It is only in the last 110 years that Rodda's has become the leading supplier of one of Cornwall's most precious exports: clotted cream.
The End of an Era
Rodda's is a family business, with the site of its factory on the family's original farmstead in Scorrier. In the early nineteenth century, Scorrier was a prosperous mining area, but the glory days of mining in the area were drawing to a close and the miners were beginning to look to the land to see if it would offer them a better living. Thomas Rodda was one of these men. In 1879 he and his wife Eliza Jane took up the tenancy of a farm at Scorrier, making a home for themselves and their family in the granite farmhouse. That farmhouse still stands as testimony to the humble beginnings of a business that it now overlooks. It was the son of Thomas and Eliza Jane, Alfred Ernest and his wife Fanny who established the name and reputation of A. E. Rodda & Son; a name that has become synonymous with quality and reliability.
Beginnings
When the business was first established, milk from the Rodda farm was turned into clotted cream for sale to friends and neighbours. The milk was left to stand in cool larders until the cream settled on the top, it was then gently heated over boiling water until the cream clotted on the surface of the milk. Left to stand in a cool larder, usually overnight, the cream set and was then skimmed off the surface of the milk. Today, modern machinery and refrigeration are used to produce that same delicious clotted cream.
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