Chapter Chasidim to Cheeseparer of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Cheese Something choice (Anglo-Saxon, ceos-an, to choose; German, kiesen; French, choisir). Chaucer says, “To cheese whether she wold him marry or no.”

“Now thou might cheese
How thou couetist [covetest] to calme, now thou
Knowist all mi names.”
P. Ploughman's Vision.

   It is not the cheese. Not the right thing; not what I should choose.
   He is quite the cheese or just the cheese- i.e. quite the thing. By a double refinement we get the slang varieties, That's prime Stilton, or double Gloster - i.e. slap bang up.

Cheeseparer (A). A skinflint: a man of small savings; economy carried to excess like one who pares or shaves off very thinly the rind of his cheese instead of cutting it off. The tale is well known of the man who chose his wife out of three sisters by the way they ate their cheese. One pared it- she (he said) was mean; one cut it off extravagantly thick- she was wasteful; the third sliced it off in a medium way, and there his choice fell.