BOB BROWN

The Complete Book
of Cheese

Illustrations by Eric Blegvad

Author of

THE WINE COOK BOOK

AMERICA COOKS

10,000 SNACKS

SALADS AND HERBS

THE SOUTH AMERICAN COOK BOOK

SOUPS, SAUCES AND GRAVIES

THE VEGETABLE COOK BOOK

LOOK BEFORE YOU COOK!

THE EUROPEAN COOK BOOK

THE WINING AND DINING QUIZ

MOST FOR YOUR MONEY

OUTDOOR COOKING

FISH AND SEAFOOD COOK BOOK

THE COUNTRY COOK BOOK

Co-author of Food and Drink Books by The Browns

LET THERE BE BEER!

HOMEMADE HILARITY

PHIL

ALPERT

Turophile Extraordinary

I Remember Cheese

Cheese market day in a town in the north of Holland. All the cheese-fanciers are out, thumping the cannon-ball Edams and the millstone Goudas with their bare red knuckles, plugging in with a hollow steel tool for samples. In Holland the business of judging a crumb of cheese has been taken with great seriousness for centuries. The abracadabra is comparable to that of the wine-taster or tea-taster. These Edamers have the trained ear of music-masters and, merely by knuckle-rapping, can tell down to an air pocket left by a gas bubble just how mature the interior is.

The connoisseurs use gingerbread as a mouth-freshener; and I, too, that sunny day among the Edams, kept my gingerbread handy and made my way from one fine cheese to another, trying out generous plugs from the heaped cannon balls that looked like the ammunition dump at Antietam.

I remember another market day, this time in Lucerne. All morning I stocked up on good Schweizerkäse and better Gruyère. For lunch I had cheese salad. All around me the farmers were rolling two-hundred-pound Emmentalers, bigger than oxcart wheels. I sat in a little café, absorbing cheese and cheese lore in equal quantities. I learned that a prize cheese must be chock-full of equal-sized eyes, the gas holes produced during fermentation. They must glisten like polished bar glass. The cheese itself must be of a light, lemonish yellow. Its flavor must be nutlike. (Nuts and Swiss cheese complement each other as subtly as Gorgonzola and a ripe banana.) There are, I learned, "blind" Swiss cheeses as well, but the million-eyed ones are better.

But I don't have to hark back to Switzerland and Holland for cheese memories. Here at home we have increasingly taken over the cheeses of all nations, first importing them, then imitating them, from Swiss Engadine to what we call Genuine Sprinz. We've naturalized Scandinavian Blues and smoked browns and baptized our own Saaland Pfarr in native whiskey. Of fifty popular Italian types we duplicate more than half, some fairly well, others badly.

We have our own legitimate offspring too, beginning with the Pineapple, supposed to have been first made about 1845 in Litchfield County, Connecticut. We have our own creamy Neufchâtel, New York Coon, Vermont Sage, the delicious Liederkranz, California Jack, Nuworld, and dozens of others, not all quite so original.

And, true to the American way, we've organized cheese-eating. There's an annual cheese week, and a cheese month (October). We even boast a mail-order Cheese-of-the-Month Club. We haven't yet reached the point of sophistication, however, attained by a Paris cheese club that meets regularly. To qualify for membership you have to identify two hundred basic cheeses, and you have to do it blindfolded.

This is a test I'd prefer not to submit to, but in my amateur way I have during the past year or two been sharpening my cheese perception with whatever varieties I could encounter around New York. I've run into briny Caucasian Cossack, Corsican Gricotta, and exotics like Rarush Durmar, Travnik, and Karaghi La-la. Cheese-hunting is one of the greatest—and least competitively crowded—of sports. I hope this book may lead others to give it a try.

The Big Cheese

One of the world's first outsize cheeses officially weighed in at four tons in a fair at Toronto, Canada, seventy years ago. Another monstrous Cheddar tipped the scales at six tons in the New York State Fair at Syracuse in 1937.

Before this, a one-thousand-pounder was fetched all the way from New Zealand to London to star in the Wembley Exposition of 1924. But, compared to the outsize Syracusan, it looked like a Baby Gouda. As a matter of fact, neither England nor any of her great dairying colonies have gone in for mammoth jobs, except Canada, with that four-tonner shown at Toronto.

We should mention two historic king-size Chesters. You can find out all about them in Cheddar Gorge, edited by Sir John Squire. The first of them weighed 149 pounds, and was the largest made, up to the year 1825. It was proudly presented to H.R.H. the Duke of York. (Its heft almost tied the 147-pound Green County wheel of Wisconsin Swiss presented by the makers to President Coolidge in 1928 in appreciation of his raising the protective tariff against genuine Swiss to 50 percent.) While the cheese itself weighed a mite under 150, His Royal Highness, ruff, belly, knee breeches, doffed high hat and all, was a hundred-weight heavier, and thus almost dwarfed it.

It was almost a century later that the second record-breaking Chester weighed in, at only 200 pounds. Yet it won a Gold Medal and a Challenge Cup and was presented to the King, who graciously accepted it. This was more than Queen Victoria had done with a bridal gift cheese that tipped the scales at 1,100 pounds. It took a whole day's yield from 780 contented cows, and stood a foot and eight inches high, measuring nine feet, four inches around the middle. The assembled donors of the cheese were so proud of it that they asked royal permission to exhibit it on a round of country fairs. The Queen assented to this ambitious request, perhaps prompted by the exhibition-minded Albert. The publicity-seeking cheesemongers assured Her Majesty that the gift would be returned to her just as soon as it had been exhibited. But the Queen didn't want it back after it was show-worn. The donors began to quarrel among themselves about what to do with the remains, until finally it got into Chancery where so many lost causes end their days. The cheese was never heard of again.

While it is generally true that the bigger the cheese the better, (much the same as a magnum bottle of champagne is better than a pint), there is a limit to the obesity of a block, ball or brick of almost any kinds of cheese. When they pass a certain limit, they lack homogeneity and are not nearly so good as the smaller ones. Today a good magnum size for an exhibition Cheddar is 560 pounds; for a prize Provolone, 280 pounds; while a Swiss wheel of only 210 will draw crowds to any food-shop window.

Yet by and large it's the monsters that get into the Cheese Hall of Fame and come down to us in song and story. For example, that four-ton Toronto affair inspired a cheese poet, James McIntyre, who doubled as the local undertaker.

An ode to a one hundred percent American mammoth was inspired by "The Ultra-Democratic, Anti-Federalist Cheese of Cheshire." This was in the summer of 1801 when the patriotic people of Cheshire, Massachusetts, turned out en masse to concoct a mammoth cheese on the village green for presentation to their beloved President Jefferson. The unique demonstration occurred spontaneously in jubilant commemoration of the greatest political triumph of a new country in a new century—the victory of the Democrats over the Federalists. Its collective making was heralded in Boston's Mercury and New England Palladium, September 8, 1801:

This spirited achievement of early democracy is commemorated today by a sign set up at the ancient and honorable town of Cheshire, located between Pittsfield and North Adams, on Route 8.

Jefferson's speech of thanks to the democratic people of Cheshire rings out in history: "I look upon this cheese as a token of fidelity from the very heart of the people of this land to the great cause of equal rights to all men."

This popular presentation started a tradition. When Van Buren succeeded to the Presidency, he received a similar mammoth cheese in token of the high esteem in which he was held. A monstrous one, bigger than the Jeffersonian, was made by New Englanders to show their loyalty to President Jackson. For weeks this stood in state in the hall of the White House. At last the floor was a foot deep in the fragments remaining after the enthusiastic Democrats had eaten their fill.

Foreign Greats

In 1953 the United States Department of Agriculture published Handbook No. 54, entitled Cheese Varieties and Descriptions, with this comment: "There probably are only about eighteen distinct types or kinds of natural cheese." All the rest (more than 400 names) are of local origin, usually named after towns or communities. A list of the best-known names applied to each of these distinct varieties or groups is given:

May we nominate another dozen to form our own Cheese Hall of Fame? We begin our list with a partial roll call of the big Blues family and end it with members of the monastic order of Port-Salut Trappist that includes Canadian Oka and our own Kentucky thoroughbred.

The Blues that Are Green

Stilton, Roquefort and Gorgonzola form the triumvirate that rules a world of lesser Blues. They are actually green, as green as the mythical cheese the moon is made of.

In almost every, land where cheese is made you can sample a handful of lesser Blues and imitations of the invincible three and try to classify them, until you're blue in the face. The best we can do in this slight summary is to mention a few of the most notable, aside from our own Blues of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and other states that major in cheese.

Danish Blues are popular and splendidly made, such as "Flower of Denmark." The Argentine competes with a pampas-grass Blue all its own. But France and England are the leaders in this line, France first with a sort of triple triumvirate within a triumvirate—Septmoncel, Gex, and Sassenage, all three made with three milks mixed together: cow, goat and sheep. Septmoncel is the leader of these, made in the Jura mountains and considered by many French caseophiles to outrank Roquefort.

This class of Blue or marbled cheese is called fromage persillé, as well as fromage bleu and pate bleue. Similar mountain cheeses are made in Auvergne and Aubrac and have distinct qualities that have brought them fame, such as Cantal, bleu d'Auvergne Guiole or Laguiole, bleu de Salers, and St. Flour. Olivet and Queville come within the color scheme, and sundry others such as Champoléon, Journiac, Queyras and Sarraz.

Of English Blues there are several celebrities beside Stilton and Cheshire Stilton. Wensleydale was one in the early days, and still is, together with Blue Dorset, the deepest green of them all, and esoteric Blue Vinny, a choosey cheese not liked by everybody, the favorite of Thomas Hardy.

Brie

Sheila Hibben once wrote in The New Yorker:

I can't imagine any difference of opinion about Brie's being the queen of all cheeses, and if there is any such difference, I shall certainly ignore it. The very shape of Brie—so uncheese-like and so charmingly fragile—is exciting. Nine times out of ten a Brie will let you down—will be all caked into layers, which shows it is too young, or at the over-runny stage, which means it is too old—but when you come on the tenth Brie, coulant to just the right, delicate creaminess, and the color of fresh, sweet butter, no other cheese can compare with it.

The season of Brie, like that of oysters, is simple to remember: only months with an "R," beginning with September, which is the best, bar none.

Caciocavallo

From Bulgaria to Turkey the Italian "horse cheese," as Caciocavallo translates, is as universally popular as it is at home and in all the Little Italics throughout the rest of the world. Flattering imitations are made and named after it, as follows:

A horse's head printed on the cheese gave rise to its popular name and to the myth that it is made of mare's milk. It is, however, curded from cow's milk, whole or partly skimmed, and sometimes from water buffalo; hard, yellow and so buttery that the best of it, which comes from Sorrento, is called Cacio burro, butter cheese. Slightly salty, with a spicy tang, it is eaten sliced when young and mild and used for grating and seasoning when old, not only on the usual Italian pastes but on sweets.

Different from the many grating cheeses made from little balls of curd called grana, Caciocavallo is a pasta fileta, or drawn-curd product. Because of this it is sometimes drawn out in long thick threads and braided. It is a cheese for skilled artists to make sculptures with, sometimes horses' heads, again bunches of grapes and other fruits, even as Provolone is shaped like apples and pears and often worked into elaborate bas-relief designs. But ordinarily the horse's head is a plain tenpin in shape or a squat bottle with a knob on the side by which it has been tied up, two cheeses at a time, on opposite sides of a rafter, while being smoked lightly golden and rubbed with olive oil and butter to make it all the more buttery.

In Calabria and Sicily it is very popular, and although the best comes from Sorrento, there is keen competition from Abruzzi, Apulian Province and Molise. It keeps well and doesn't spoil when shipped overseas.

In his Little Book of Cheese Osbert Burdett recommends the high, horsy strength of this smoked Cacio over tobacco smoke after dinner:

Camembert

Camembert is called "mold-matured" and all that is genuine is labeled Syndicat du Vrai Camembert. The name in full is Syndicat des Fabricants du Veritable Camembert de Normandie and we agree that this is "a most useful association for the defense of one of the best cheeses of France." Its extremely delicate piquance cannot be matched, except perhaps by Brie.

Napoleon is said to have named it and to have kissed the waitress who first served it to him in the tiny town of Camembert. And there a statue stands today in the market place to honor Marie Harel who made the first Camembert.

Camembert is equally good on thin slices of apple, pineapple, pear, French "flute" or pumpernickel. As-with Brie and with oysters, Camembert should be eaten only in the "R" months, and of these September is the best.

Since Camembert rhymes with beware, if you can't get the véritable don't fall for a domestic imitation or any West German abomination such as one dressed like a valentine in a heart-shaped box and labeled "Camembert—Cheese Exquisite." They are equally tasteless, chalky with youth, or choking with ammoniacal gas when old and decrepit.

Cheddar

The English Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery says:

Named for a village near Bristol where farmer Joseph Harding first manufactured it, the best is still called Farmhouse Cheddar, but in America we have practically none of this. Farmhouse Cheddar must be ripened at least nine months to a mellowness, and little of our American cheese gets as much as that. Back in 1695 John Houghton wrote that it "contended in goodness (if kept from two to five years, according to magnitude) with any cheese in England."

Today it is called "England's second-best cheese," second after Stilton, of course.

In early days a large cheese sufficed for a year or two of family feeding, according to this old note: "A big Cheddar can be kept for two years in excellent condition if kept in a cool room and turned over every other day."

But in old England some were harder to preserve: "In Bath... I asked one lady of the larder how she kept Cheddar cheese. Her eyes twinkled: 'We don't keep cheese; we eats it.'"

Cheshire

Cheshire is not only the most literary cheese in England, but the oldest. It was already manufactured when Caesar conquered Britain, and tradition is that the Romans built the walled city of Chester to control the district where the precious cheese was made. Chester on the River Dee was a stronghold against the Roman invasion.

It came to fame with The Old Cheshire Cheese in Elizabethan times and waxed great with Samuel Johnson presiding at the Fleet Street Inn where White Cheshire was served "with radishes or watercress or celery when in season," and Red Cheshire was served toasted or stewed in a sort of Welsh Rabbit. (See Chapter 5.)

The Blue variety is called Cheshire-Stilton, and Vyvyan Holland, in Cheddar Gorge suggests that "it was no doubt a cheese of this sort, discovered and filched from the larder of the Queen of Hearts, that accounted for the contented grin on the face of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland."

All very English, as recorded in Victor Meusy's couplet:

Edam and Gouda

The crimson cannon balls of Holland have been heard around the world. Known as "red balls" in England and katzenkopf, "cat's head," in Germany, they differ from Gouda chiefly in the shape, Gouda being round but flattish and now chiefly imported as one-pound Baby Goudas.

Edam when it is good is very, very good, but when it is bad it is horrid. Sophisticated ones are sent over already scalloped for the ultimate consumer to add port, and there are crocks of Holland cheese potted with sauterne. Both Edam and Gouda should be well aged to develop full-bodied quality, two years being the accepted standard for Edam.

The best Edams result from a perfect combination of Breed (black-and-white Dutch Friesian) and Feed (the rich pasturage of Friesland and Noord Holland).

The Goudas, shaped like English Derby and Belgian Delft and Leyden, come from South Holland. Some are specially made for the Jewish trade and called Kosher Gouda. Both Edam and Gouda are eaten at mealtimes thrice daily in Holland. A Dutch breakfast without one or the other on black bread with butter and black coffee would be unthinkable. They're also boon companions to plum bread and Dutch cocoa.

"Eclair Edams" are those with soft insides.

Emmentaler, Gruyère and Swiss

Whether an Emmentaler is eminently Schweizerkäse, grand Gruyère from France, or lesser Swiss of the United States, the shape, size and glisten of the eyes indicate the stage of ripeness, skill of making and quality of flavor. They must be uniform, roundish, about the size of a big cherry and, most important of all, must glisten like the eye of a lass in love, dry but with the suggestion of a tear.

Gruyère does not see eye to eye with the big-holed Swiss Saanen cartwheel or American imitation. It has tiny holes, and many of them; let us say it is freckled with pinholes, rather than pock-marked. This variety is technically called a niszler, while one without any holes at all is "blind." Eyes or holes are also called vesicles.

Gruyère Trauben (Grape Gruyère) is aged in Neuchâtel wine in Switzerland, although most Gruyère has been made in France since its introduction there in 1722. The most famous is made in the Jura, and another is called Comté from its origin in Franche-Comté.

A blind Emmentaler was made in Switzerland for export to Italy where it was hardened in caves to become a grating cheese called Raper, and now it is largely imitated there. Emmentaler, in fact, because of its piquant pecan-nut flavor and inimitable quality, is simulated everywhere, even in Switzerland.

Besides phonies from Argentina and countries as far off as Finland, we get a flood of imported and domestic Swisses of all sad sorts, with all possible faults—from too many holes, that make a flabby, wobbly cheese, to too few—cracked, dried-up, collapsed or utterly ruined by molding inside. So it will pay you to buy only the kind already marked genuine in Switzerland. For there cheese such as Saanen takes six years to ripen, improves with age, and keeps forever.

Cartwheels well over a hundred years old are still kept in cheese cellars (as common in Switzerland as wine cellars are in France), and it is said that the rank of a family is determined by the age and quality of the cheese in its larder.

Feta and Casere

The Greeks have a name for it—Feta. Their neighbors call it Greek cheese. Feta is to cheese what Hymettus is to honey. The two together make ambrosial manna. Feta is soft and as blinding white as a plate of fresh Ricotta smothered with sour cream. The whiteness is preserved by shipping the cheese all the way from Greece in kegs sloshing full of milk, the milk being renewed from time to time. Having been cured in brine, this great sheep-milk curd is slightly salty and somewhat sharp, but superbly spicy.

When first we tasted it fresh from the keg with salty milk dripping through our fingers, we gave it full marks. This was at the Staikos Brothers Greek-import store on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. We then compared Feta with thin wisps of its grown-up brother, Casere. This gray and greasy, hard and brittle palate-tickler of sheep's milk made us bleat for more Feta.

Gorgonzola

Gorgonzola, least pretentious of the Blues triumvirate (including Roquefort and Stilton) is nonetheless by common consent monarch of all other Blues from Argentina to Denmark. In England, indeed, many epicures consider Gorgonzola greater than Stilton, which is the highest praise any cheese can get there. Like all great cheeses it has been widely imitated, but never equaled. Imported Gorgonzola, when fruity ripe, is still firm but creamy and golden inside with rich green veins running through. Very pungent and highly flavored, it is eaten sliced or crumbled to flavor salad dressings, like Roquefort.

Hablé Crème Chantilly

The name Hablé Crème Chantilly sounds French, but the cheese is Swedish and actually lives up to the blurb in the imported package: "The overall characteristic is indescribable and delightful freshness."

This exclusive product of the Walk Gärd Creamery was hailed by Sheila Hibben in The New Yorker of May 6, 1950, as enthusiastically as Brillat-Savarin would have greeted a new dish, or the Planetarium a new star:

Miss Hibben goes on to say that only a fromage à la crème made in Quebec had come anywhere near her impression of the new Swedish triumph. She quotes the last word from the makers themselves: "This is a very special product that has never been made on this earth before," and speaks of "the elusive flavor of mushrooms" before summing up, "the exquisitely textured curd and the unexpectedly fresh flavor combine to make it one of the most subtly enjoyable foods that have come my way in a long time."

And so say we—all of us.

Hand Cheese

Hand cheese has this niche in our Cheese Hall of Fame not because we consider it great, but because it is usually included among the eighteen varieties on which the hundreds of others are based. It is named from having been molded into its final shape by hand. Universally popular with Germanic races, it is too strong for the others. To our mind, Hand cheese never had anything that Allgäuer or Limburger hasn't improved upon.

It is the only cheese that is commonly melted into steins of beer and drunk instead of eaten. It is usually studded with caraway seeds, the most natural spice for curds.

Limburger

Limburger has always been popular in America, ever since it was brought over by German-American immigrants; but England never took to it. This is eloquently expressed in the following entry in the English Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery:

But this is libel. Butter-soft and sapid, Limburger has brought gustatory pleasure to millions of hardy gastronomes since it came to light in the province of Lüttich in Belgium. It has been Americanized for almost a century and is by now one of the very few cheeses successfully imitated here, chiefly in New York and Wisconsin.

Early Wisconsiners will never forget the Limburger Rebellion in Green County, when the people rose in protest against the Limburger caravan that was accustomed to park in the little town of Monroe where it was marketed. They threatened to stage a modern Boston Tea Party and dump the odoriferous bricks in the river, when five or six wagonloads were left ripening in the sun in front of the town bank. The Limburger was finally stored safely underground.

Livarot

Livarot has been described as decadent, "The very Verlaine of them all," and Victor Meusy personifies it in a poem dedicated to all the great French cheeses, of which we give a free translation:

Münster

Like Limburger, this male cheese, often caraway-flavored, does not fare well in England. Although over here we consider Münster far milder than Limburger, the English writer Eric Weir in When Madame Cooks will have none of it:

I cannot think why this cheese was not thrown from the aeroplanes during the war to spread panic amongst enemy troops. It would have proved far more efficacious than those nasty deadly gases that kill people permanently.

Neufchâtel

Although originally from Normandy, Neufchâtel, like Limburger, was so long ago welcomed to America and made so splendidly at home here that we may consider it our very own. All we have against it is that it has served as the model for too many processed abominations.

Parmesan, Romano, Pecorino, Pecorino Romano

Parmesan when young, soft and slightly crumbly is eaten on bread. But when well aged, let us say up to a century, it becomes Rock of Gibraltar of cheeses and really suited for grating. It is easy to believe that the so-called "Spanish cheese" used as a barricade by Americans in Nicaragua almost a century ago was none other than the almost indestructible Grana, as Parmesan is called in Italy.

The association between cheese and battling began in B.C. days with the Jews and Romans, who fed cheese to their soldiers not only for its energy value but as a convenient form of rations, since every army travels on its stomach and can't go faster than its impedimenta. The last notable mention of cheese in war was the name of the Monitor: "A cheese box on a raft."

Romano is not as expensive as Parmesan, although it is as friable, sharp and tangy for flavoring, especially for soups such as onion and minestrone. It is brittle and just off-white when well aged.

Although made of sheep's milk, Pecorino is classed with both Parmesan and Romano. All three are excellently imitated in Argentina. Romano and Pecorino Romano are interchangeable names for the strong, medium-sharp and piquant Parmesan types that sell for considerably less. Most of it is now shipped from Sardinia. There are several different kinds: Pecorino Dolce (sweet), Sardo Tuscano, and Pecorino Romano Cacio, which relates it to Caciocavallo.

Kibitzers complain that some of the cheaper types of Pecorino are soapy, but fans give it high praise. Gillian F., in her "Letter from Italy" in Osbert Burdett's delectable Little Book of Cheese, writes:

Pont L'Evêque

This semisoft, medium-strong, golden-tinted French classic made since the thirteenth century, is definitely a dessert cheese whose excellence is brought out best by a sound claret or tawny port.

Port-Salut (See Trappist)

Provolone

Within recent years Provolone has taken America by storm, as Camembert, Roquefort, Swiss, Limburger, Neufchâtel and such great ones did long before. But it has not been successfully imitated here because the original is made of rich water-buffalo milk unattainable in the Americas.

With Caciocavallo, this mellow, smoky flavorsome delight is put up in all sorts of artistic forms, red-cellophaned apples, pears, bells, a regular zoo of animals, and in all sorts of sizes, up to a monumental hundred-pound bas-relief imported for exhibition purposes by Phil Alpert.

Roquefort

Homage to this fromage! Long hailed as le roi Roquefort, it has filled books and booklets beyond count. By the miracle of Penicillium Roqueforti a new cheese was made. It is placed historically back around the eighth century when Charlemagne was found picking out the green spots of Persillé with the point of his knife, thinking them decay. But the monks of Saint-Gall, who were his hosts, recorded in their annals that when they regaled him with Roquefort (because it was Friday and they had no fish) they also made bold to tell him he was wasting the best part of the cheese. So he tasted again, found the advice excellent and liked it so well he ordered two caisses of it sent every year to his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. He also suggested that it be cut in half first, to make sure it was well veined with blue, and then bound up with a wooden fastening.

Perhaps he hoped the wood would protect the cheeses from mice and rats, for the good monks of Saint-Gall couldn't be expected to send an escort of cats from their chalky caves to guard them—even for Charlemagne. There is no telling how many cats were mustered out in the caves, in those early days, but a recent census put the number at five hundred. We can readily imagine the head handler in the caves leading a night inspection with a candle, followed by his chief taster and a regiment of cats. While the Dutch and other makers of cheese also employ cats to patrol their storage caves, Roquefort holds the record for number. An interesting point in this connection is that as rats and mice pick only the prime cheeses, a gnawed one is not thrown away but greatly prized.

Sapsago, Schabziger or Swiss Green Cheese

The name Sapsago is a corruption of Schabziger, German for whey cheese. It's a hay cheese, flavored heavily with melilot, a kind of clover that's also grown for hay. It comes from Switzerland in a hard, truncated cone wrapped in a piece of paper that says:

We put this wrapper among our papers, sealed it tight in an envelope, and to this day, six months later, the scent of Sapsago clings 'round it still.

Stilton

When all seems lost in England there is still Stilton, an endless after-dinner conversation piece to which England points with pride. For a sound appreciation of this cheese see Clifton Fadiman's introduction to this book.

Taleggio and Bel Paese

When the great Italian cheese-maker, Galbini, first exported Bel Paese some years ago, it was an eloquent ambassador to America. But as the years went on and imitations were made in many lands, Galbini deemed it wise to set up his own factory in our beautiful country. However, the domestic Bel Paese and a minute one-pounder called Bel Paesino just didn't have that old Alpine zest. They were no better than the German copy called Schönland, after the original, or the French Fleur des Alpes.

Mel Fino was a blend of Bel Paese and Gorgonzola. It perked up the market for a full, fruity cheese with snap. Then Galbini hit the jackpot with his Taleggio that fills the need for the sharpest, most sophisticated pungence of them all.

Trappist, Port-Salut, or Port du Salut, and Oka

In spite of its name Trappist is no rat-trap commoner. Always of the elect, and better known as Port-Salut or Port du Salut from the original home of the Trappist monks in their chief French abbey, it is also set apart from the ordinary Canadians under the name of Oka, from the Trappist monastery there. It is made by Trappist monks all over the world, according to the original secret formula, and by Trappist Cistercian monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani Trappist in Kentucky.

This is a soft cheese, creamy and of superb flavor. You can't go wrong if you look for the monastery name stamped on, such as Harzé in Belgium, Mont-des-Cats in Flanders, Sainte Anne d'Auray in Brittany, and so forth.

Last but not least, a commercial Port-Salut entirely without benefit of clergy or monastery is made in Milwaukee under the Lion Brand. It is one of the finest American cheeses in which we have ever sunk a fang.

Native Americans

American Cheddars

The first American Cheddar was made soon after 1620 around Plymouth by Pilgrim fathers who brought along not only cheese from the homeland but a live cow to continue the supply. Proof of our ability to manufacture Cheddar of our own lies in the fact that by 1790 we were exporting it back to England.

It was called Cheddar after the English original named for the village of Cheddar near Bristol. More than a century ago it made a new name for itself, Herkimer County cheese, from the section of New York State where it was first made best. Herkimer still equals its several distinguished competitors, Coon, Colorado Blackie, California Jack, Pineapple, Sage, Vermont Colby and Wisconsin Longhorn.

The English called our imitation Yankee, or American, Cheddar, while here at home it was popularly known as yellow or store cheese from its prominent position in every country store; also apple-pie cheese because of its affinity for the all-American dessert.

The first Cheddar factory was founded by Jesse Williams in Rome, New York, just over a century ago and, with Herkimer County Cheddar already widely known, this established "New York" as the preferred "store-boughten" cheese.

An account of New York's cheese business in the pioneer Wooden Nutmeg Era is found in Ernest Elmo Calkins' interesting book, They Broke the Prairies. A Yankee named Silvanus Ferris, "the most successful dairyman of Herkimer County," in the first decades of the 1800's teamed up with Robert Nesbit, "the old Quaker Cheese Buyer." They bought from farmers in the region and sold in New York City. And "according to the business ethics of the times," Nesbit went ahead to cheapen the cheese offered by deprecating its quality, hinting at a bad market and departing without buying. Later when Ferris arrived in a more optimistic mood, offering a slightly better price, the seller, unaware they were partners, and ignorant of the market price, snapped up the offer.

Similar sharp-trade tactics put too much green cheese on the market, so those honestly aged from a minimum of eight months up to two years fetched higher prices. They were called "old," such as Old Herkimer, Old Wisconsin Longhorn, and Old California Jack.

Although the established Cheddar ages are three, fresh, medium-cured, and cured or aged, commercially they are divided into two and described as mild and sharp. The most popular are named for their states: Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin. Two New York Staters are called and named separately, Coon and Herkimer County. Tillamook goes by its own name with no mention of Oregon. Pineapple, Monterey Jack and Sage are seldom listed as Cheddars at all, although they are basically that.

Brick

Brick is the one and only cheese for which the whole world gives America credit. Runners-up are Liederkranz, which rivals say is too close to Limburger, and Pineapple, which is only a Cheddar under its crisscrossed, painted and flavored rind. Yet Brick is no more distinguished than either of the hundred percent Americans, and in our opinion is less worth bragging about.

It is a medium-firm, mild-to-strong slicing cheese for sandwiches and melting in hot dishes. Its texture is elastic but not rubbery, its taste sweetish, and it is full of little round holes or eyes. All this has inspired enthusiasts to liken it to Emmentaler. The most appropriate name for it has long been "married man's Limburger." To make up for the mildness caraway seed is sometimes added.

About Civil War time, John Jossi, a dairyman of Dodge County, Wisconsin, came up with this novelty, a rennet cheese made of whole cow's milk. The curd is cut like Cheddar, heated, stirred and cooked firm to put in a brick-shaped box without a bottom and with slits in the sides to drain. When this is set on the draining table a couple of bricks are also laid on the cooked curd for pressure. It is this double use of bricks, for shaping and for pressing, that has led to the confusion about which came first in originating the name.

The formed "bricks" of cheese are rubbed with salt for three days and they ripen slowly, taking up to two months.

We eat several million pounds a year and 95 percent of that comes from Wisconsin, with a trickle from New York.

Colorado Blackie Cheese

A subtly different American Cheddar is putting Colorado on our cheese map. It is called Blackie from the black-waxed rind and it resembles Vermont State cheese, although it is flatter. This is a proud new American product, proving that although Papa Cheddar was born in England his American kinfolk have developed independent and valuable characters all on their own.

Coon Cheese

Coon cheese is full of flavor from being aged on shelves at a higher temperature than cold storage. Its rind is darker from the growth of mold and this shade is sometimes painted on more ordinary Cheddars to make them look like Coon, which always brings a 10 percent premium above the general run.

Made at Lowville, New York, it has received high praise from a host of admirers, among them the French cook, Clementine, in Phineas Beck's Kitchen, who raised it to the par of French immortals by calling it Fromage de Coon. Clementine used it "with scintillating success in countless French recipes which ended with the words gratiner au four et servir tres chaud. She made baguettes of it by soaking sticks three-eights-inch square and one and a half inches long in lukewarm milk, rolling them in flour, beaten egg and bread crumbs and browning them instantaneously in boiling oil."

Herkimer County Cheese

The standard method for making American Cheddar was established in Herkimer County, New York, in 1841 and has been rigidly maintained down to this day. Made with rennet and a bacterial "starter," the curd is cut and pressed to squeeze out all of the whey and then aged in cylindrical forms for a year or more.

Herkimer leads the whole breed by being flaky, brittle, sharp and nutty, with a crumb that will crumble, and a soft, mouth-watering pale orange color when it is properly aged.

Isigny

Isigny is a native American cheese that came a cropper. It seems to be extinct now, and perhaps that is all to the good, for it never meant to be anything more than another Camembert, of which we have plenty of imitation.

Not long after the Civil War the attempt was made to perfect Isigny. The curd was carefully prepared according to an original formula, washed and rubbed and set aside to come of age. But when it did, alas, it was more like Limburger than Camembert, and since good domestic Limburger was then a dime a pound, obviously it wouldn't pay off. Yet in shape the newborn resembled Camembert, although it was much larger. So they cut it down and named it after the delicate French Creme d'lsigny.

Jack, California Jack and Monterey Jack

Jack was first known as Monterey cheese from the California county where it originated. Then it was called Jack for short, and only now takes its full name after sixty years of popularity on the West Coast. Because it is little known in the East and has to be shipped so far, it commands the top Cheddar price.

Monterey Jack is a stirred curd Cheddar without any annatto coloring. It is sweeter than most and milder when young, but it gets sharper with age and more expensive because of storage costs.

Liederkranz

No native American cheese has been so widely ballyhooed, and so deservedly, as Liederkranz, which translates "Wreath of Song."

Back in the gay, inventive nineties, Emil Frey, a young delicatessen keeper in New York, tried to please some bereft customers by making an imitation of Bismarck Schlosskäse. This was imperative because the imported German cheese didn't stand up during the long sea trip and Emil's customers, mostly members of the famous Liederkranz singing society, didn't feel like singing without it. But Emil's attempts at imitation only added indigestion to their dejection, until one day—fabelhaft! One of those cheese dream castles in Spain came true. He turned out a tawny, altogether golden, tangy and mellow little marvel that actually was an improvement on Bismarck's old Schlosskäse. Better than Brick, it was a deodorized Limburger, both a man's cheese and one that cheese-conscious women adored.

Emil named it "Wreath of Song" for the Liederkranz customers. It soon became as internationally known as tabasco from Texas or Parisian Camembert which it slightly resembles. Borden's bought out Frey in 1929 and they enjoy telling the story of a G.I. who, to celebrate V-E Day in Paris, sent to his family in Indiana, only a few miles from the factory at Van Wert, Ohio, a whole case of what he had learned was "the finest cheese France could make." And when the family opened it, there was Liederkranz.

Another deserved distinction is that of being sandwiched in between two foreign immortals in the following recipe:

Schnitzelbank Pot

The name Schnitzelbank comes from "school bench," a game. This snappy-sweet pot is specially suited to a beer party and stein songs. It is also the affinity-spread with rye and pumpernickel, and may be served in small sandwiches or on crackers, celery and such, to make appetizing tidbits for cocktails, tea, or cider.

Like the trinity of cheeses that make it, the mixture is eaten best at room temperature, when its flavor is fullest. If kept in the refrigerator, it should be taken out a couple of hours before serving. Since it is a natural cheese mixture, which has gone through no process or doping with preservative, it will not keep more than two weeks. This mellow-sharp mix is the sort of ideal the factory processors shoot at with their olive-pimiento abominations. Once you've potted your own, you'll find it gives the same thrill as garnishing your own Liptauer.

Minnesota Blue

The discovery of sandstone caves in the bluffs along the Mississippi, in and near the Twin Cities of Minnesota, has established a distinctive type of Blue cheese named for the state. Although the Roquefort process of France is followed and the cheese is inoculated in the same way by mold from bread, it can never equal the genuine imported, marked with its red-sheep brand, because the milk used in Minnesota Blue is cow's milk, and the caves are sandstone instead of limestone. Yet this is an excellent, Blue cheese in its own right.

Pineapple

Pineapple cheese is named after its shape rather than its flavor, although there are rumors that some pineapple flavor is noticeable near the oiled rind. This flavor does not penetrate through to the Cheddar center. Many makers of processed cheese have tampered with the original, so today you can't be sure of anything except getting a smaller size every year or two, at a higher price. Originally six pounds, the Pineapple has shrunk to nearly six ounces. The proper bright-orange, oiled and shellacked surface is more apt to be a sickly lemon.

Always an ornamental cheese, it once stood in state on the side-board under a silver bell also made to represent a pineapple. You cut a top slice off the cheese, just as you would off the fruit, and there was a rose-colored, fine-tasting, mellow-hard cheese to spoon out with a special silver cheese spoon or scoop. Between meals the silver top was put on the silver holder and the oiled and shellacked rind kept the cheese moist. Even when the Pineapple was eaten down to the rind the shell served as a dunking bowl to fill with some salubrious cold Fondue or salad.

Made in the same manner as Cheddar with the curd cooked harder, Pineapple's distinction lies in being hung in a net that makes diamond-shaped corrugations on the surface, simulating the sections of the fruit. It is a pioneer American product with almost a century and a half of service since Lewis M. Norton conceived it in 1808 in Litchfield County, Connecticut. There in 1845 he built a factory and made a deserved fortune out of his decorative ingenuity with what before had been plain, unromantic yellow or store cheese.

Perhaps his inspiration came from cone-shaped Cheshire in old England, also called Pineapple cheese, combined with the hanging up of Provolones in Italy that leaves the looser pattern of the four sustaining strings.

Sage, Vermont Sage and Vermont State

The story of Sage cheese, or green cheese as it was called originally, shows the several phases most cheeses have gone through, from their simple, honest beginnings to commercialization, and sometimes back to the real thing.

The English Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery has an early Sage recipe:

Fancy Cheese in America, lay Charles A. Publow, records the commercialization of the cheese mentioned above, a century or two later, in 1910:

A modern cheese authority reported on the current (1953) method:

In scouting around for a possible maker of the real thing today, we wrote to Vrest Orton of Vermont, and got this reply:

The genuine Vermont Sage arrived. Here are our notes on it:

Old-Fashioned Vermont State Store Cheese

We received from savant Vrest Orton another letter, together with some Vermont store cheese and some crackers.

Tillamook

It takes two pocket-sized, but thick, yellow volumes to record the story of Oregon's great Tillamook. The Cheddar Box, by Dean Collins, comes neatly boxed and bound in golden cloth stamped with a purple title, like the rind of a real Tillamook. Volume I is entitled Cheese Cheddar, and Volume II is a two-pound Cheddar cheese labeled Tillamook and molded to fit inside its book jacket. We borrowed Volume I from a noted littérateur, and never could get him to come across with Volume II. We guessed its fate, however, from a note on the flyleaf of the only tome available: "This is an excellent cheese, full cream and medium sharp, and a unique set of books in which Volume II suggests Bacon's: 'Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.'"

Wisconsin Longhorn

Since we began this chapter with all-American Cheddars, it is only fitting to end with Wisconsin Longhorn, a sort of national standard, even though it's not nearly so fancy or high-priced as some of the regional natives that can't approach its enormous output. It's one of those all-purpose round cheeses that even taste round in your mouth. We are specially partial to it.

Most Cheddars are named after their states. Yet, putting all of these thirty-seven states together, they produce only about half as much as Wisconsin alone.

Besides Longhorn, in Wisconsin there are a dozen regional competitors ranging from White Twin Cheddar, to which no annatto coloring has been added, through Green Bay cheese to Wisconsin Redskin and Martha Washington Aged, proudly set forth by P.H. Kasper of Bear Creek, who is said to have "won more prizes in forty years than any ten cheesemakers put together."

To help guarantee a market for all this excellent apple-pie cheese, the Wisconsin State Legislature made a law about it, recognizing the truth of Eugene Field's jingle:

Small matter in the Badger State when the affinity is made legal and the couple lawfully wedded in Statute No. 160,065. It's still in force:

Besides Longhorn, Wisconsin leads in Limburger. It produces so much Swiss that the state is sometimes called Swissconsin.

Sixty-five Sizzling Rabbits

Unlike the beginning of the classical Jugged Hare recipe: "First catch your hare!" we modern Rabbit-hunters start off with "First catch your Cheddar!" And some of us go so far as to smuggle in formerly forbidden fromages such as Gruyère, Neufchâtel, Parmesan, and mixtures thereof. We run the gamut of personal preferences in selecting the Rabbit cheese itself, from old-time American, yellow or store cheese, to Coon and Canadian-smoked, though all of it is still Cheddar, no matter how you slice it.

Then, too, guests are made to run the gauntlet of all-American trimmings from pin-money pickles to peanut butter, succotash and maybe marshmallows; we add mustard, chill, curry, tabasco and sundry bottled red devils from the grocery store, to add pep and piquance to the traditional cayenne and black pepper. This results in Rabbits that are out of focus, out of order and out of this world.

Among modern sins of omission, the Worcestershire sauce is left out by braggarts who aver that they can take it or leave it. And, in these degenerate days, when it comes to substitutions for the original beer or stale pale ale, we find the gratings of great Cheddars wet down with mere California sherry or even ginger ale—yet so far, thank goodness, no Cokes. And there's tomato juice out of a can into the Rum Turn Tiddy, and sometimes celery soup in place of milk or cream.

In view of all this, we can only look to the standard cookbooks for salvation. These are mostly compiled by women, our thoughtful mothers, wives and sweethearts who have saved the twin Basic Rabbits for us. If it weren't for these Fanny Farmers, the making of a real aboriginal Welsh Rabbit would be a lost art—lost in sporting male attempts to improve upon the original.

The girls are still polite about the whole thing and protectively pervert the original spelling of "Rabbit" to "Rarebit" in their culinary guides. We have heard that once a club of ladies in high society tried to high-pressure the publishers of Mr. Webster's dictionary to change the old spelling in their favor. Yet there is a lot to be said for this more genteel and appetizing rendering of the word, for the Welsh masterpiece is, after all, a very rare bit of cheesemongery, male or female.

Yet in dealing with "Rarebits" the distaff side seldom sets down more than the basic Adam and Eve in a whole Paradise of Rabbits: No. 1, the wild male type made with beer, and No. 2, the mild female made with milk. Yet now that the chafing dish has come back to stay, there's a flurry in the Rabbit warren and the new cooking encyclopedias give up to a dozen variants. Actually there are easily half a gross of valid ones in current esteem.

The two basic recipes are differentiated by the liquid ingredient, but both the beer and the milk are used only one way—warm, or anyway at room temperature. And again for the two, there is but one traditional cheese—Cheddar, ripe, old or merely aged from six months onward. This is also called American, store, sharp, Rabbit, yellow, beer, Wisconsin Longhorn, mouse, and even rat.

The seasoned, sapid Cheddar-type, so indispensable, includes dozens of varieties under different names, regional or commercial. These are easily identified as sisters-under-the-rinds by all five senses:

Beyond all this (and in spite of the school that plumps for the No. 2 temperance alternative) we must point out that beer has a special affinity for Cheddar. The French have clearly established this in their names for Welsh Rabbit, Fromage Fondue à la Bière and Fondue à l'Anglaise.

To prepare such a cheese for the pan, each Rabbit hound may have a preference all his own, for here the question comes up of how it melts best. Do you shave, slice, dice, shred, mince, chop, cut, scrape or crumble it in the fingers? This will vary according to one's temperament and the condition of the cheese. Generally, for best results it is coarsely grated. When it comes to making all this into a rare bit of Rabbit there is:

The One and Only Method

Use a double boiler, or preferably a chafing dish, avoiding aluminum and other soft metals. Heat the upper pan by simmering water in the lower one, but don't let the water boil up or touch the top pan.

Most, but not all, Rabbits are begun by heating a bit of butter or margarine in the pan in which one cup of roughly grated cheese, usually sharp Cheddar, is melted and mixed with one-half cup of liquid, added gradually. (The butter isn't necessary for a cheese that should melt by itself.)

The two principal ingredients are melted smoothly together and kept from curdling by stirring steadily in one direction only, over an even heat. The spoon used should be of hard wood, sterling silver or porcelain. Never use tin, aluminum or soft metal—the taste may come off to taint the job.

Be sure the liquid is at room temperature, or warmer, and add it gradually, without interrupting the stirring. Do not let it come to the bubbling point, and never let it boil.

Add seasonings only when the cheese is melted, which will take two or three minutes. Then continue to stir in the same direction without an instant's letup, for maybe ten minutes or more, until the Rabbit is smooth. The consistency and velvety smoothness depend a good deal on whether or not an egg, or a beaten yolk, is added.

The hotter the Rabbit is served, the better. You can sizzle the top with a salamander or other branding iron, but in any case set it forth as nearly sizzling as possible, on toast hellishly hot, whether it's browned or buttered on one side or both.

Give a thought to the sad case of the "little dog whose name was Rover, and when he was dead he was dead all over." Something very similar happens with a Rabbit that's allowed to cool down—when it's cold it's cold all over, and you can't resuscitate it by heating.

No. 1 (with beer)

Usually crusts are cut off the bread before toasting, and some aesthetes toast one side only, spreading the toasted side with cold butter for taste contrast. Lay the toast on the hot plate, buttered side down, and pour the Rabbit over the porous untoasted side so it can soak in. (This is recommended in Lady Llanover's recipe, which appears on page 52 of this book.)

Although the original bread for Rabbit toast was white, there is now no limit in choice among whole wheat, graham, rolls, muffins, buns, croutons and crackers, to infinity.

No. 2 (with milk)

Either of these basic recipes can be made without eggs, and more cheaply, although the beaten egg is a guarantee against stringiness. When the egg is missing, we are sad to record that a teaspoon or so of cornstarch generally takes its place.

Rabbiteers are of two minds about fast and slow heating and stirring, so you'll have to adjust that to your own experience and rhythm. As a rule, the heat is reduced when the cheese is almost melted, and speed of stirring slows when the eggs and last ingredients go in.

Many moderns who have found that monosodium glutamate steps up the flavor of natural cheese, put it in at the start, using one-half teaspoon for each cup of grated Cheddar. When it comes to pepper you are fancy-free. As both black and white pepper are now held in almost equal esteem, you might equip your hutch with twin hand-mills to do the grinding fresh, for this is always worth the trouble. Tabasco sauce is little used and needs a cautious hand, but some addicts can't leave it out any more than they can swear off the Worcestershire.

The school that plumps for malty Rabbits and the other that goes for milky ones are equally emphatic in their choice. So let us consider the compromise of our old friend Frederick Philip Stieff, the Baltimore homme de bouche, as he set it forth for us years ago in 10,000 Snacks: "The idea of cooking a Rabbit with beer is an exploded and dangerous theory. Tap your keg or open your case of ale or beer and serve with, not in your Rabbit."

The Stieff Recipe     BASIC MILK RABBIT

Nota bene: A Welsh Rabbit, to be a success, should never be of the consistency whereby it may be used to tie up bundles, nor yet should it bounce if inadvertently dropped on the kitchen floor.

Lady Llanover's Toasted Welsh Rabbit

From this original toasting of the cheese many Englishmen still call Welsh Rabbit "Toasted Cheese," but Lady Llanover goes on to point out that the Toasted Rabbit of her Wales and the Melted or Stewed Buck Rabbit of England (which has become our American standard) are as different in the making as the regional cheeses used in them, and she says that while doctors prescribed the toasted Welsh as salubrious for invalids, the stewed cheese of Olde England was "only adapted to strong digestions."

English literature rings with praise for the toasted cheese of Wales and England. There is Christopher North's eloquent "threads of unbeaten gold, shining like gossamer filaments (that may be pulled from its tough and tenacious substance)."

Yet not all of the references are complimentary.

Thus Shakespeare in King Lear:

And Sydney Smith's:

But Rhys Davis in My Wales makes up for such rudenesses:

And, lest we forget, the wonderful drink that made Alice grow and grow to the ceiling of Wonderland contained not only strawberry jam but toasted cheese.

Then there's the frightening nursery rhyme:

And, perhaps worst of all, Shakespeare, no cheese-lover, this tune in Merry Wives of Windsor:

An elaboration of the simple Welsh original went English with Dr. William Maginn, the London journalist whose facile pen enlivened the Blackwoods Magazine era with Ten Tales:

Dr. Maginn's Rabbit

The popularity of this has come down to us in the succinct summing-up, "Toasted cheese hath no master."

The Welsh original became simple after Dr. Maginn's supper sandwich was served, a century and a half ago; for it was served as a savory to sum up and help digest a dinner, in this form:

After-Dinner Rabbit

While toasted cheese undoubtedly was the Number One dairy dish of Anglo-Saxons, stewed cheese came along to rival it in Elizabethan London. This sophisticated, big-city dish, also called a Buck Rabbit, was the making of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, where Dr. Johnson later presided. And it must have been the pick of the town back in the days when barrooms still had sawdust on the floor, for the learned Doctor endorsed old Omar Khayyam's love of the pub with: "There is nothing which has been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern." Yet he was no gourmet, as may be judged by his likening of a succulent, golden-fried oyster to "a baby's ear dropped in sawdust."

Perhaps it is just as well that no description of the world's first Golden Buck has come down from him. But we don't have to look far for on-the-spot pen pictures by other men of letters at "The Cheese," as it was affectionately called. To a man they sang praises for that piping hot dish of preserved and beatified milk.

Inspired by stewed cheese, Mark Lemon, the leading rhymester of Punch, wrote the following poem and dedicated it to the memory of Lovelace:

All that's necessary is an old-time "cheese stewer" or a reasonable substitute. The base of this is what was once quaintly called a "hot-water bath." This was a sort of miniature wash boiler just big enough to fit in snugly half a dozen individual tins, made squarish and standing high enough above the bath water to keep any of it from getting into the stew. In these tins the cheese is melted. But since such a tinsmith's contraption is hard to come by in these days of fireproof cooking glass, we suggest muffin tins, ramekins or even small cups to crowd into the bottom of your double boiler or chafing dish. But beyond this we plump for a revival of the "cheese stewer" in stainless steel, silver or glass.

In the ritual at "The Cheese," these dishes, brimming over, "bubbling and blistering with the stew," followed a pudding that's still famous. Although down the centuries the recipe has been kept secret, the identifiable ingredients have been itemized as follows: "Tender steak, savory oyster, seductive kidney, fascinating lark, rich gravy, ardent pepper and delicate paste"—not to mention mushrooms. And after the second or third helping of pudding, with a pint of stout, bitter, or the mildest and mellowest brown October Ale in a dented pewter pot, "the stewed Cheshire cheese."

Cheese was the one and only other course prescribed by tradition and appetite from the time when Charles II aled and regaled Nell Gwyn at "The Cheese," where Shakespeare is said to have sampled this "kind of a glorified Welsh Rarebit, served piping hot in the square shallow tins in which it is cooked and garnished with sippets of delicately colored toast."

Among early records is this report of Addison's in The Spectator of September 25,1711:

Only a short time later, in 1725, the proprietor of Simpson's in the Strand inaugurated a daily guessing contest that drew crowds to his fashionable eating and drinking place. He would set forth a huge portion of cheese and wager champagne and cigars for the house that no one present could correctly estimate the weight, height and girth of it.

As late as 1795, when Boswell was accompanying Dr. Johnson to "The Cheese," records of St. Dunstan's Club, which also met there, showed that the current price of a Buck Rabbit was tuppence, and that this was also the amount of the usual tip.

Ye Original Recipe

It is notable that there is no beer or ale in this recipe, but not lamentable, since all aboriginal cheese toasts were washed down in tossing seas of ale, beer, porter, stout, and 'arf and 'arf.

This creamy Stewed Buck, on which the literary greats of Johnson's time supped while they smoked their church wardens, received its highest praise from an American newspaper woman who rhapsodized in 1891: "Then came stewed cheese, on the thin shaving of crisp, golden toast in hot silver saucers—so hot that the cheese was the substance of thick cream, the flavor of purple pansies and red raspberries commingled."

This may seem a bit flowery, but in truth many fine cheeses hold a trace of the bouquet of the flowers that have enriched the milk. Alpine blooms and herbs haunt the Gruyère, Parmesan wafts the scent of Parma violets, the Flower Cheese of England is perfumed with the petals of rose, violet, marigold and jasmine.

Oven Rabbit (FROM AN OLD RECIPE)

Yorkshire Rabbit

Golden Buck

Golden Buck II

The Venerable Yorkshire Buck

Bacon is the thing that identifies any Yorkshire Rabbit.

Yale College Welsh Rabbit (MORIARTY'S)

There are two schools of postgraduate Rabbit-hunters: Yale, as above, with beer both in the Rabbit and with it; and the other featured in the Stieff Recipe, which prefers leaving it out of the Rabbit, but taps a keg to drink with it.

The ancient age of Moriarty's campus classic is registered by the use of pioneer black pepper in place of white, which is often used today and is thought more sophisticated by some than the red cayenne of Rector's Naughty Nineties Chafing Dish Rabbit, which is precisely the same as our Basic Recipe No. 1.

Border-hopping Bunny, or Frijole Rabbit

In the whole hutch of kitchen Rabbitry the most popular modern ones are made with tomato, a little or lots. They hop in from everywhere, from Mexico to South Africa, and call for all kinds of quirks, down to mixing in some dried beef, and there is even a skimpy Tomato Rabbit for reducers, made with farmer cheese and skimmed milk.

Although the quaintly named Rum Tum Tiddy was doubtless the great-grandpappy of all Tomato Rabbits, a richer, more buttery and more eggy one has taken its place as the standard today. The following is a typical recipe for this, tried and true, since it has had a successful run through a score of the best modern cookbooks, with only slight personal changes to keep its juice a-flowing blood-red.

Tomato Rabbit

Instead of soda, some antiquated recipes call for "a tablespoon of bicarbonate of potash."

South African Tomato Rabbit

Rum Tum Tiddy, Rink Tum Ditty, etc. (OLD BOSTON STYLE)

Tomato Soup Rabbit

This is a quickie Rum Tum Tiddy, without any onion, a poor, housebroken version of the original. It can be called a Celery Rabbit if you use a can of celery soup in place of the tomato.

Onion Rum Tum Tiddy

Sherry Rum Tum Tiddy

Blushing Bunny

Blushing Bunny is one of those playful English names for dishes, like Pink Poodle, Scotch Woodcock (given below), Bubble and Squeak (Bubblum Squeakum), and Toad in the Hole.

Scotch Woodcock

American Woodchuck

No doubt this all-American Tomato Rabbit with brown sugar was named after the native woodchuck, in playful imitation of the Scotch Woodcock above. It's the only Rabbit we know that's sweetened with brown sugar.

Running Rabbit

This running cony can be poured over toast like any other Rabbit, or over crushed crackers in a hot tureen, as in Sherry Rum Tum Tiddy, or served like Fondue, in the original cooking bowl or pan, with the spoon kept moving in it in one direction only and the Rabbit following the spoon, like a greyhound following the stuffed rabbit at the dog races.

Mexican Chilaly

This popular modern Rabbit seems to be a twin to Rum Tum Tiddy in spite of the centuries' difference in age.

Fluffy, Eggy Rabbit

Grilled Tomato Rabbit

Grilled Tomato and Onion Rabbit

For another onion-flavored Rabbit see Celery and Onion Rabbit.

The Devil's Own

Dried Beef or Chipped Beef Rabbit

No salt is needed on this jerked steer meat that is called both dried beef and chipped beef on this side of the border, tasajo on the other side, and xarque when you get all the way down to Brazil.

Kansas Jack Rabbit

Kansas has plenty of the makings for this, yet the dish must have been easier to make on Baron Münchhausen's "Island of Cheese," where the cornstalks produced loaves of bread, ready-made, instead of ears, and were no doubt crossed with long-eared jacks to produce Corn Rabbits quite as miraculous.

After tomatoes, in popularity, come onions and then green peppers or canned pimientos as vegetable ingredients in modern, Americanized Rabbits. And after that, corn, as in the following recipe which appeals to all Latin-Americans from Mexico to Chile because it has everything.

Latin-American Corn Rabbit

Mushroom-Tomato Rabbit

Celery and Onion Rabbit

Asparagus Rabbit

Oyster Rabbit

Sea-food Rabbits

"Bouquet of the Sea" Rabbit

Other Fish Rabbit, Fresh or Dried

Grilled Sardine Rabbit

Roe Rabbits

Plain Sardine Rabbit

Anchovy Rabbit

Smoked sturgeon, whiting, eel, smoked salmon, and the like

Smoked Cheddar Rabbit

Crumby Rabbit

Crumby Tomato Rabbit

Gherkin or Irish Rabbit

This may have been called Irish after the green of the pickle.

Dutch Rabbit

Proof that there is no Anglo-Saxon influence here lies in the use of prepared mustard. The English, who still do a lot of things the hard way, mix their biting dry mustard fresh with water before every meal, while the Germans and French bottle theirs, as we do.

Pumpernickel Rabbit

Since beer is a kind of liquid bread, it is natural for the two to commingle in Rabbits whether they are blond Dutch or black pumpernickel. And since cheese is only solid milk, and the Cheddar is noted for its beery smell, there is further affinity here. An old English proverb sums it up neatly: "Bread and cheese are the two targets against death."

By the way, the word pumpernickel is said to have been coined when Napoleon tasted his first black bread in Germany. Contemptuously he spat it out with: "This would be good for my horse, Nicole." "Bon pour Nicole" in French.

Gruyère Welsh Rabbit au gratin

To our American ears anything au gratin suggests "with cheese," so this Rabbit au gratin may sound redundant. To a Frenchman, however, it means a dish covered with bread crumbs.

Swiss Cheese Rabbit

Sherry Rabbit

Spanish Sherry Rabbit

Pink Poodle

Although wine Rabbits, red or white, are as unusual as Swiss ones with Gruyère in place of Cheddar, wine is commonly drunk with anything from a Golden Buck to a Blushing Bunny. But for most of us, a deep draught of beer or ale goes best with an even deeper draught of the mellow scent of a Cheddar golden-yellow.

Savory Eggy Dry Rabbit

This "dry" Rabbit, in which the volume of the eggs makes up for any lacking liquid, is still served as a savory after the sweets to finish a fine meal in some old-fashioned English homes and hostelries.

Cream Cheese Rabbit

Reducing Rarebit (Tomato Rarebit)[A]

Curry Rabbit

People who can't let well enough alone put cornstarch in Rabbits, just as they add soda to spoil the cooking of vegetables.

Ginger Ale Rabbit

Buttermilk Rabbit

Eggnog Rabbit

Ever since the innovation of bottled eggnogs fresh from the milkman in holiday season, such supremely creamy and flavorful Rabbits have been multiplying as fast as guinea pigs.

All-American Succotash Rabbit

Danish Rabbit

Easy English Rabbit

The Fondue

There is a conspiracy among the dictionary makers to take the heart out of the Fondue. Webster makes it seem no better than a collapsed soufflé, with his definition:

Thorndike-Barnhart further demotes this dish, that for centuries has been one of the world's greatest, to "a combination of melted cheese, eggs and butter" and explains that the name comes from the French fondre, meaning melt. The latest snub is delivered by the up-to-date Cook's Quiz compiled by TV culinary experts:

A baked dish, indeed! Yet the Fondue has added to the gaiety and inebriety of nations, if not of dictionaries. It has commanded the respect of the culinary great. Savarin, Boulestin, André Simon, all have hailed its heavenly consistency, all have been regaled with its creamy, nay velvety, smoothness.

A touch of garlic, a dash of kirsch, fresh ground black pepper, nutmeg, black pearl truffles of Bugey, red cayenne pepper, the luscious gravy of roast turkey—such little matters help to make an authentic dunking Fondue, not a baked Fondue, mind you. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin a century and a half ago brought the original "receipt" with him and spread it around with characteristic generosity during the two years of his exile in New York after the French Revolution. In his monumental Physiologie du Goût he records an incident that occurred in 1795:

As the great French gourmet, Savarin was born on the Swiss border (at Belley, in the fertile Province of Bugey, where Gertrude Stein later had a summer home), he no doubt ate Gruyère three times a day, as is the custom in Switzerland and adjacent parts. He sets down the recipe just as he got it from its Swiss source, the papers of Monsieur Trolliet, in the neighboring Canton of Berne:

This has long been quoted as the proper way to make the national dish of Switzerland. Savarin tells of hearing oldsters in his district laugh over the Bishop of Belley eating his Fondue with a spoon instead of the traditional fork, in the first decade of the 1700's. He tells, too, of a Fondue party he threw for a couple of his septuagenarian cousins in Paris "about the year 1801."

The party was the result of much friendly taunting of the master: "By Jove, Jean, you have been bragging for such a long time about your Fondues, you have continually made our mouths water. It is high time to put a stop to all this. We will come and breakfast with you some day and see what sort of thing this dish is."

Savarin invited them for ten o'clock next day, started them off with the table laid on a "snow white cloth, and in each one's place two dozen oysters with a bright golden lemon. At each end of the table stood a bottle of sauterne, carefully wiped, excepting the cork, which showed distinctly that it had been in the cellar for a long while.... After the oysters, which were quite fresh, came some broiled kidneys, a terrine of foie gras, a pie with truffles, and finally the Fondue. The different ingredients had all been assembled in a stewpan, which was placed on the table over a chafing dish, heated with spirits of wine.

"Then," Savarin is quoted, "I commenced operations on the field of battle, and my cousins did not lose a single one of my movements. They were loud in the praise of this preparation, and asked me to let them have the receipt, which I promised them...."

This Fondue breakfast party that gave the nineteenth century such a good start was polished off with "fruits in season and sweets, a cup of genuine mocha, ... and finally two sorts of liqueurs, one a spirit for cleansing, and the other an oil for softening."

This primitive Swiss Cheese Fondue is now prepared more elaborately in what is called:

Neufchâtel Style

The dunkers stab the hunks of crusty French bread through the soft part to secure a firm hold in the crust, for if your bread comes off in dunking you pay a forfeit, often a bottle of wine.

The dunking is done as rhythmically as the stirring, guests taking regular turns at twirling the fork to keep the cheese swirling. When this "chafing dish cheese custard," as it has been called in England, is ready for eating, each in turn thrusts in his fork, sops up a mouthful with the bread for a sponge and gives the Fondue a final stir, to keep it always moving in the same direction. All the while the heat beneath the dish keeps it gently bubbling.

Such a Neufchâtel party was a favorite of King Edward VII, especially when he was stepping out as the Prince of Wales. He was as fond of Fondue as most of the great gourmets of his day and preferred it to Welsh Rabbit, perhaps because of the wine and kirsch that went into it.

At such a party a little heated wine is added if the Fondue gets too thick. When finally it has cooked down to a crust in the bottom of the dish, this is forked out by the host and divided among the guests as a very special dividend.

Any dry white wine will serve in a pinch, and the Switzerland Cheese Association, in broadcasting this classical recipe, points out that any dry rum, slivovitz, or brandy, including applejack, will be a valid substitute for the kirsch. To us, applejack seems specially suited, when we stop to consider our native taste that has married apple pie to cheese since pioneer times.

In culinary usage fondue means "melting to an edible consistency" and this, of course, doesn't refer to cheese alone, although we use it chiefly for that.

In France Fondue is also the common name for a simple dish of eggs scrambled with grated cheese and butter and served very hot on toasted bread, or filled into fancy paper cases, quickly browned on top and served at once. The reason for this is that all baked Fondues fall as easily and as far as Soufflés, although the latter are more noted for this failing. There is a similarity in the soft fluffiness of both, although the Fondues are always more moist. For there is a stiff, stuffed-shirt buildup around any Soufflé, suggesting a dressy dinner, while Fondue started as a self-service dunking bowl.

Our modern tendency is to try to make over the original French Fondue on the Welsh Rabbit model—to turn it into a sort of French Rabbit. Although we know that both Gruyère and Emmentaler are what we call Swiss and that it is impossible in America to duplicate the rich Alpine flavor given by the mountain herbs, we are inclined to try all sorts of domestic cheeses and mixtures thereof. But it's best to stick to Savarin's "lump of Gruyère" just as the neighboring French and Italians do. It is interesting to note that this Swiss Alpine cooking has become so international that it is credited to Italy in the following description we reprint from When Madame Cooks, by an Englishman, Eric Weir:

Fondue à l'Italienne

The imported Swiss sometimes is cubed instead of grated, then marinated for four or five hours in dry white wine, before being melted and liquored with the schnapps. This can be pleasantly adopted here in:

All-American Fondue

We say French instead of Swiss because the French took over the dish so eagerly, together with the great Gruyère that makes it distinctive. They internationalized it, sent it around the world with bouillabaisse and onion soup, that celestial soupe à l'oignon on which snowy showers of grated Gruyère descend.

To put the Welsh Rabbit in its place they called it Fondue à l'Anglaise, which also points up the twinlike relationship of the world's two favorite dishes of melted cheese. But to differentiate and show they are not identical twins, the No. 1 dish remained Fromage Fondue while the second was baptized Fromage Fondue à la Bière.

Beginning with Savarin the French whisked up more rapturous, rhapsodic writing about Gruyère and its offspring, the Fondue, together with the puffed Soufflé, than about any other imported cheese except Parmesan.

Parmesan and Gruyère were praised as the two greatest culinary cheeses. A variant Fondue was made of the Italian cheese.

Parmesan Fondue

Sapsago Swiss Fondue

This is also nice when served bubbling in individual, preheated pastry shells, casseroles or ramekins, although this way most of the fun of the dunking party is left out. To make up for it, however, cooked slices of mushrooms are sometimes added.

At the Cheese Cellar in the New York World's Fair Swiss Pavilion, where a continual dunking party was in progress, thousands of amateurs learned such basic things as not to overcook the Fondue lest it become stringy, and the protocol of dunking in turn and keeping the mass in continual motion until the next on the Fondue line dips in his cube of bread. The success of the dish depends on making it quickly, keeping it gently a-bubble and never letting it stand still for a split second.

The Swiss, who consume three or four times as much cheese per capita as we, and almost twice as much as the French, are willing to share Fondue honors with the French Alpine province of Savoy, a natural cheese cellar with almost two dozen distinctive types of its very own, such as Fat cheese, also called Death's Head; La Grande Bornand, a luscious half-dried sheep's milker; Chevrotins, small, dry goat milk cheeses; and Le Vacherin. The latter, made in both Savoy and Switzerland, boasts two interesting variants:

Here is a good assortment of Fondues:

Vacherin-Fribourg Fondue

La Fondue Comtois

Chives Fondue

Tomato Fondue

Here the two most popular melted-cheese dishes tangle, but they're held together with the common ingredient, tomato.

Fondue also appears as a sauce to pour over baked tomatoes. Stale bread crumbs are soaked in tomato juice to make:

Tomato Baked Fondue

Although Savarin's dunking Fondue was first to make a sensation on these shores and is still in highest esteem among epicures, the Fondue America took to its bosom was baked. The original recipe came from the super-caseous province of Savoy under the explicit title, La Fondue au Fromage.

La Fondue au Fromage

We adapted this to our national taste which had already based the whole business of melted cheese on the Welsh Rabbit with stale ale or milk instead of white wine and Worcestershire, mustard and hot peppers. Today we have come up with this:

100% American Fondue

This is more of a baked cheese job than a true Fondue, to our way of thinking, and the scalded milk doesn't exactly take the place of the wine or kirsch. It is characteristic of our bland cookery.

Quickie Catsup Tummy Fondiddy

This might be suggested as a novel midnight snack, with a cup of cocoa, for a change.

Cheese and Rice Fondue

Corn and Cheese Fondue

Cheese Fondue

Brick Fondue

Cheddar Dunk Bowl

Soufflés, Puffs and Ramekins

There isn't much difference between Cheese Soufflés, Puffs and Ramekins. The English Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery, the oldest, biggest and best of such works in English, lumps Cheese Puffs and Ramekins together, giving the same recipes for both, although it treats each extensively under its own name when not made with cheese.

Cheese was the basis of the original French Ramequin, cheese and bread crumbs or puff paste, baked in a mold, (with puff again the principal factor in Soufflé, from the French souffler, puff up).

Basic Soufflé

To perk up the seasonings, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, nutmeg and even garlic are often used to taste, especially in England.

While Cheddar is the preferred cheese, Parmesan runs it a close second. Then comes Swiss. You may use any two or all three of these together. Sometimes Roquefort is added, as in the Ramekin recipes below.

Parmesan Soufflé

Swiss Soufflé

Parmesan-Swiss Soufflé

Any of these makes a light, lovely luncheon or a proper climax to a grand dinner.

Cheese-Corn Soufflé

Cheese-Spinach Soufflé

Cheese-Tomato Soufflé

Cheese-Sea-food Soufflé

Cheese-Mushroom Soufflé

Cheese-Potato Soufflé (Potato Puff)

The English, in concocting such a Potato Puff or Soufflé, are inclined to make it extra peppery, as they do most of their Cheese Soufflés, with not only "a dust of black pepper" but "as much cayenne as may be stood on the face of a sixpence."

Cheese Fritter Soufflés

Three-in-One Puffs

Such miniature Soufflés serve as liaison officers for this entire section, since they are baked in ramekins, or ramequins, from the French word for the small baking dish that holds only one portion. These may be paper boxes, usually round, earthenware, china, Pyrex, of any attractive shape in which to bake or serve the Puffs.

More commonly, in America at least, Puffs are made without ramekin dishes, as follows:

Fried Puffs

Roquefort Puffs

The constant repetition of "beaten stiff" in these recipes may give the impression that the whites are badly beaten up, but such is not the case. They are simply whipped to peaks and left moist and glistening as a teardrop, with a slight sad droop to them that shows there is still room for the air to expand and puff things up in cooking.

Parmesan Puffs

Breakfast Puffs

Danish Fondue Puffs

New England Cheese Puffs

Cream Cheese Puffs

Some Ramekin dishes are made so exquisitely that they may be collected like snuff bottles.

Ramekins are utterly French, both the cooked Puffs and the individual dishes in which they are baked. Essentially a Cheese Puff, this is also au gratin when topped with both cheese and browned bread crumbs. By a sort of poetic cook's license the name is also applied to any kind of cake containing cheese and cooked in the identifying one-portion ramekin. It is used chiefly in the plural, however, together with the name of the chief ingredient, such as "Chicken Ramekins" and:

Cheese Ramekins I

Cheese Ramekins II

Cheese Ramekins III

The most popular cheese for Ramekins has always been, and still is, Gruyère. But because the early English also adopted Italian Parmesan, that followed as a close second, and remains there today.

Sharp Cheddar makes tangy Ramekins, as will be seen in this second oldster; for though it prescribes Gloucester and Cheshire "'arf-and-'arf," both are essentially Cheddars. Gloucester has been called "a glorified Cheshire" and the latter has long been known as a peculiarly rich and colorful elder brother of Cheddar, described in Kenelme Digby's Closet Open'd as a "quick, fat, rich, well-tasted cheese."

Cheese Ramekins IV

Since both Gloucester cheese and Cheshire cheese are not easily come by even in London today, it would be hard to reproduce this in the States. So the best we can suggest is to use half-and-half of two of our own great Cheddars, say half-Coon and half-Wisconsin Longhorn, or half-Tillamook and half-Herkimer County. For there's no doubt about it, contrasting cheeses tickle the taste buds, and as many as three different kinds put together make Puffs all the more perfect.

Ramequins à la Parisienne

Le Ramequin Morézien

Several French provinces are known for distinctive individual Puffs usually served in the dainty fluted forms they are cooked in. In Jeanne d'Arc's Lorraine, for instance, there are the simply named Les Ramequins, made of flour, Gruyère and eggs.

Swiss-Roquefort Ramekins

Puff Paste Ramekins

Frying Pan Ramekins

There are two schools of salamandering among turophiles. One holds that it toughens the cheese and makes it less digestible; the other that it's simply swell. Some of the latter addicts have special cheese-branding irons made with their monograms, to identify their creations, whether they be burned on the skins of Welsh Rabbits or Frying Pan Ramekins. Salamandering with an iron that has a gay, carnivalesque design can make a sort of harlequin Ramekin.

Casserole Ramekin

Pizzas, Blintzes, Pastes, Cheese Cakes, etc.

No matter how big or hungry your family, you can always appease them with pizza.

Pizza—The Tomato Pie of Sicily

The proper pans come all tin and a yard wide, down to regular apple-pie size, but twelve-inch pans are the most popular.

Miniature Pizzas

Italian-Swiss Scallopini

Neapolitan Baked Lasagne, or Stuffed Noodles

Little Hats, Cappelletti

Dauphiny Ravioli

Italian Fritters

Italian Asparagus and Cheese

Garlic on Cheese

Spaniards call garlic cloves teeth, Englishmen call them toes. It was cheese and garlic together that inspired Shakespeare to Hotspur's declaration in King Henry IV:

Some people can take a mere soupçon of the stuff, while others can down it by the soup spoon, so we feel it necessary in reprinting our recipe to point to the warning of another early English writer: "Garlic is very dangerous to young children, fine women and hot young men."

Blintzes

Vatroushki

Cottage Cheese Pancakes

Cheese Waffles

Today you can get imported canned Holland cheese waffles to heat quickly and serve.

Napkin Dumpling

Butter and cheese are mixed together in equal parts for cheese butter. Serbia has a cheese called Butter that more or less matches Turkey's Durak, of which butter is an indispensable ingredient, and French Cancoillote is based on sour milk simmered with butter.

The English have a cheese called Margarine, made with the butter substitute. In Westphalia there are no two schools of thought about whether 'tis better to eat butter with cheese or not, for in Westphalia sour-milk cheese, butter is mixed in as part of the process of making. The Arabs press curds and butter together to store in vats, and the Scots have Crowdie or Cruddy Butter.

The value of buttermilk is stressed in an extravagant old Hindu proverb: "A man may live without bread, but without buttermilk he dies."

Cheese was made before butter, being the earliest form of dairy manufacturing, so buttermilk cheese came well after plain milk cheese, even after whey cheese. It is very tasty, and a natural with potato salad. The curd is salted after draining and sold in small parchment packages.

German "leather" cheese has buttermilk mixed with the plain. The Danes make their Appetitost with sour buttermilk. Ricotta Romano, for a novelty, is made of sheep buttermilk.

In America cottage cheese is also called pot, Dutch and smearcase. It is the easiest and quickest to make of all cheeses, by simply letting milk sour, or adding buttermilk to curdle it, then stand a while on the back of the kitchen stove, since it is homemade as a rule. It is drained in a bag of cheesecloth and may be eaten the same day, usually salted.

The Pilgrims brought along the following two tried and true recipes from olde England, and both are still in use and good repute:

Cottage Cheese No. 1

Let milk sour until clotted. Pour boiling water over and it will immediately curd. Stir well and pour into a colander. Pour a little cold water on the curd, salt it and break it up attractively for serving.

Cottage Cheese No. 2

A very rich and tasty variety is made of equal parts whole milk and buttermilk heated together to just under the boiling point. Pour into a linen bag and let drain until next day. Then remove, salt to taste and add a bit of butter or cream to make a smooth, creamy consistency, and pat into balls the size of a Seville orange.

In England there are three distinct manners of making cream cheese:

1. Fresh milk strained and lightly drained.
2. Scalded cream dried and drained dry, like Devonshire.
3. Rennet curd ripened, with thin, edible rind, or none, packaged
   in small blocks or miniature bricks by dairy companies, as
   in the U.S. Philadelphia Cream cheese.

American cream cheeses follow the English pattern, being named from then: region or established brands owned by Breakstone, Borden, Kraft, Shefford, etc.

Cream cheese such as the first listed above is easier to make than cottage cheese or any other. Technically, in fact, it is not a cheese but the dried curd of milk and is often called virginal. Fresh milk is simply strained through muslin in a perforated box through which the whey and extra moisture drains away for three or four days, leaving a residue as firm as fresh butter.

In America, where we mix cream cheese with everything, a popular assortment of twelve sold in New York bears these ingredients and names: Chives, Cherry, Garden, Caviar, Lachs, Pimiento, Olive and Pimiento, Pineapple, Relish, Scallion, Strawberry, and Triple Decker of Relish, Pimiento and Cream in layers.

In Italy there is Stracchino Cream, in Sweden Chantilly. Finally, to come to France, la Foncée or Fromage de Pau, a cream also known around the world as Crême d'Isigny, Double Crême, Fromage à la Crême de Gien, Pots de Crême St. Gervais, etc. etc.

The French go even farther by eating thick fresh cream with Chevretons du Beaujolais and Fromage Blanc in the style that adds à la crême to their already glorified names.

The English came along with Snow Cream Cheese that is more of a dessert, similar to Italian Cream Cheese.

We'd like to have a cheese ice cream to contrast with too sweet ones. Attempts at this have been made, both here and in England; Scottish Caledonian cream came closest. We have frozen cheese with fruit, to be sure, but no true cheese ice cream as yet, though some cream cheeses seem especially suitable.

In this parody by Calverly, "The Farmer's Daughter," the ingredients suggest cheese cake, dating back to 1381 In England. From that year Kettner in his Book of the Table quotes this recipe:

This primitive "receipt" grew up into Richmond maids of honor that caused Kettner to wax poetic with:

Coronation Cheese Cake

The Oxford Dictionary defines cheese cake as a "tartlet filled with sweet curds, etc." This shows that the cheese is the main thing, and the and-so-forth just a matter of taste. We are delighted to record that the Lord Mayor of London picked traditional cheese tarts, the maids of honor mentioned earlier in this section, as the Coronation dessert with which to regale the second Queen Elizabeth at the city luncheon in Guildhall This is most fitting, since these tarts were named after the maids of honor at the court of the first Queen Elizabeth. The original recipe is said to have sold for a thousand pounds. These Richmond maids of honor had the usual cheese cake ingredients: butter and eggs and pounds of cheese, but what made the subtle flavor: nutmeg, brandy, lemon, orange-flower water, or all four?

More than 2,000 years before this land of Coronation cheese cake, the Greeks had a word for it—several in fact: Apician Cheese Cake, Aristoxenean, and Philoxenean among them. Then the Romans took it over and we read from an epistle of the period:

Plato mentioned cheese cake, and a town near Thebes was named for it before Christ was born, at a time when cheese cakes were widely known as "dainty food for mortal man."

Today cheese cakes come in a half dozen popular styles, of which the ones flavored with fresh pineapple are the most popular in New York. But buyers delight in every sort, including the one hundred percent American type called cheese pies.

Indeed, there seems to be no dividing line between cheese cakes and cheese pies. While most of them are sweet, some are made piquant with pimientos and olives. We offer a favorite of ours made from popcorn-style pot cheese put through a sieve:

Pineapple Cheese Cake

Because of the time and labor involved maybe you had better buy your cheese cakes, even though some of the truly fine ones cost a dime a bite, especially the pedigreed Jewish-American ones in Manhattan. Reuben's and Lindy's are two leaders at about five dollars a cake. Some are fruited with cherries or strawberries.

Cheese Custard

Open-faced Cheese Pie

The Apple-pie Affinity

Hot apple pie was always accompanied with cheese in New England, even as every slice of apple pie in Wisconsin has cheese for a sidekick, according to law. Pioneer hot pies were baked in brick ovens and flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon and rose geranium. The cheese was Cheddar, but today all sorts of pie and cheese combinations are common, such as banana pie and Gorgonzola, mince with Danish Blue, pumpkin with cream cheese, peach pie with Hablé, and even a green dusting of Sapsago over raisin pie.

Apple pie au gratin, thickly grated over with Parmesan, Caciocavallo or Sapsago, is something special when served with black coffee. Cider, too, or applejack, is a natural accompaniment to any dessert of apple with its cheese.

Apple Pie Adorned

Apple Pie á la Cheese

Cheese-crusty Apple Pie

Flan au Fromage

Christmas Cake Sandwiches

Angelic Camembert

Such a delicate dessert is a favorite with the ladies, since some of them find a prime Camembert a bit too strong if taken straight.

Although A. W. Fulton's observation in For Men Only is going out of date, it is none the less amusing:

Another writer has said that "only gourmets among women seem to like cheese, except farm women and foreigners." The association between gourmets and farm women is borne out by the following urgent plea from early Italian landowners:

Having found out for ourselves, we suggest a golden slice of Taleggio, Stracchino, or pale gold Bel Paese to polish off a good dinner, with a juicy Lombardy pear or its American equivalent, a Bartlett, let us say.

This celestial association of cheese and pears is further accented by the French:

This places the cheese after the fruit, as the last course, in accordance with early English usage set down by John Clarke in his Paroemiologia:

But in his Epigrams Ben Jonson serves them together.

That brings us back to cheese and pippins:

When should the cheese be served? In England it is served before or after the fruit, with or without the port.

Following The Book of Keruynge in modern spelling we note when it was published in 1431 the proper thing "after meat" was "pears, nuts, strawberries, whortleberries (American huckle berries) and hard cheese." In modern practice we serve some suitable cheese like Camembert directly on slices of apple and pears, Gorgonzola on sliced banana, Hablé spread on pineapple and a cheese dessert tray to match the Lazy Lou, with everything crunchy down to Crackerjacks. Good, too, are figs, both fresh and preserved, stuffed with cream cheese, kumquats, avocados, fruity dunking mixtures of Pineapple cheese, served in the scooped-out casque of the cheese itself, and apple or pear and Provolone creamed and put back in the rind it came in. Pots of liquored and wined cheeses, no end, those of your own making being the best.

Champagned Roquefort or Gorgonzola

After dinner cheeses suggested by Phil Alpert are:

FROM FRANCE: Port-Salut, Roblochon, Coulommiers, Camembert, Brie, Roquefort, Calvados (try it with a spot of Calvados, apple brandy)

FROM THE U.S.: Liederkranz, Blue, Cheddar

FROM SWEDEN: Hablé Crême Chantilly

FROM ITALY: Taleggio, Gorgonzola, Provolone, Bel Paese

FROM HUNGARY: Kascaval

FROM SWITZERLAND: Swiss Gruyère

FROM GERMANY: Kümmelkäse

FROM NORWAY: Gjetost, Bondost

FROM HOLLAND: Edam, Gouda

FROM ENGLAND: Stilton

FROM POLAND: Warshawski Syr

Au Gratin, Soups, Salads and Sauces

He who says au gratin says Parmesan. Thomas Gray, the English poet, saluted it two centuries ago with:

On September 4, 1666, Pepys recorded the burying of his pet Parmesan, "as well as my wine and some other things," in a pit in Sir W. Batten's garden. And on the selfsame fourth of September, more than a century later, in 1784, Woodforde in his Diary of a Country Parson wrote:

The second most popular cheese for au gratin is Italian Romano, and, for an entirely different flavor, Swiss Sapsago. The French, who gave us this cookery term, use it in its original meaning for any dish with a browned topping, usually of bread crumbs, or crumbs and cheese. In America we think of au gratin as grated cheese only, although Webster says, "with a browned covering, often mixed with butter or cheese; as, potatoes au gratin." So let us begin with that.

Potatoes au Gratin

Eggs au Gratin

Tomatoes au Gratin

Onion Soup au Gratin

At gala parties, where wine flows, a couple of glasses of champagne are often added to the bouillon.

In the famed onion soup au gratin at Les Halles in Paris, grated Gruyère is used in place of Parmesan. They are interchangeable in this recipe.

Chicken Cheese Soup

Imported French marmites are de rigueur for a real onion soup au gratin, and an imported Parmesan grinder might be used for freshly ground cheese. In preparing, it is well to remember that they are basically only melted cheese, melted from the top down.

Green Cheese Salad Julienne

American Cheese Salad

Cheese and Nut Salad

Brie or Camembert Salad

Three-in-One Mold

Swiss Cheese Salad

Rosie's Swiss Breakfast Cheese Salad

Often Emmentaler is cubed in a salad for breakfast, relished specially by males on the morning after. We quote the original recipe brought over by Rosie from the Swiss Tyrol to thrill the writers' and artists' colony of Ridgefield, New Jersey, in her brother Emil's White House Inn:

Gorgonzola and Banana Salad

Cheese and Pea Salad

Apple and Cheese Salad

Roquefort Cheese Salad Dressing

Unfortunately, even when the Roquefort is the French import, complete with the picture of the sheep in red, and garanti véritable, the dressing is often ruined by bad vinegar and cottonseed oil (of all things). When bottled to sell in stores, all sorts of extraneous spice, oils and mustard flour are used where nothing more is necessary than the manipulation of a fork, fine olive oil and good vinegar—white wine, tarragon or malt. Some ardent amateurs must have their splash of Worcestershire sauce or lemon juice with salt and pepper. This Roquefort dressing is good on all green salads, but on endive it's something special.

Sauce Mornay

Sauce Mornay has been hailed internationally as "the greatest culinary achievement in cheese."

Plain Cheese Sauce

From thin to medium to thick it serves divers purposes:

Thin: it may be used instead of milk to make a tasty milk toast, sometimes spiced with curry.

Medium: for baking by pouring over crackers soaked in milk.

Thick: serves as a sort of Welsh Rabbit when poured generously over bread toasted on one side only, with the untoasted side up, to let the sauce sink in.

Parsleyed Cheese Sauce

Since this is the Complete Book of Cheese we will fill a bounteous cornucopia here with more or less essential, if not indispensable, recipes and dishes not so easy to classify, or overlooked or crowded out of the main sections devoted to the classic Fondues, Rabbits, Soufflés, etc.

Stuffed Celery, Endive, Anise and Other Suitable Stalks

Use any soft cheese you like, or firm cheese softened by pressing through a sieve; at room temperature, of course, with any seasoning or relish.

Cold Dunking

Cheese Charlotte

Straws

Supa Shetgia [B]

Italians are so dependent on cheese to enrich all their dishes, from soups to spaghetti—and indeed any vegetable—that a shaker of grated Parmesan, Romano or reasonable substitute stands ready at every table, or is served freshly grated on a side dish. Thus any Italian soup might be called a cheese soup, but we know of only one, the great minestrone, in which cheese is listed as an indispensable ingredient along with the pasta, peas, onion, tomatoes, kidney beans, celery, olive oil, garlic, oregano, potatoes, carrots, and so forth.

Likewise, a chunk of melting or toasting cheese is essential in the Fritto Misto, the finest mixed grill we know, and it's served up as a separate tidbit with the meats.

Italians grate on more cheese for seasoning than any other people, as the French are wont to use more wine in cooking.

Pfeffernüsse and Caraway

The gingery little "pepper nuts," pfeffernüsse, imported from Germany in barrels at Christmastime, make one of the best accompaniments to almost any kind of cheese. For contrast try a dish of caraway.

Diablotins

Small rounds of buttered bread or toast heaped with a mound of grated cheese and browned in the oven is a French contribution.

Cheddar Omelet

Parmesan Omelet (mild)

Parmesan Omelet (full flavored)

A Meal-in-One Omelet

Tomato and

Omelet with Cheese Sauce

The French use grated Gruyère for this with all sorts of sauces, such as the Savoyar de Savoie, with potatoes, chervil, tarragon and cream. A delicious appearance and added flavor can be had by browning with a salamander.

Spanish Flan—Quesillo

Italian Fritto Misto

Polish Piroghs (a pocketful of cheese)

Cheesed Mashed Potatoes

If there's a chafing dish handy, a first-rate nightcap can be made via a

Sautéed Swiss Sandwich

Appetizers, Crackers, Sandwiches, Savories,
Snacks, Spreads and Toasts

In America cheese got its start in country stores in our cracker-barrel days when every man felt free to saunter in, pick up the cheese knife and cut himself a wedge from the big-bellied rattrap cheese standing under its glass bell or wire mesh hood that kept the flies off but not the free-lunchers. Cheese by itself being none too palatable, the taster would saunter over to the cracker barrel, shoo the cat off and help himself to the old-time crackers that can't be beat today.

At that time Wisconsin still belonged to the Indians and Vermont was our leading cheese state, with its Sage and Cheddar and Vermont Country Store Crackers, as Vrest Orton of Weston Vermont, calls them. When Orton heard we were writing this book, he sent samples from the store his father started in 1897 which is still going strong. Together with the Vermont Good Old-fashioned Natural Cheese and the Sage came a handy handmade Cracker Basket, all wicker, ten crackers long and just one double cracker wide. A snug little casket for those puffy, old-time, two-in-one soda biscuits that have no salt to spoil the taste of the accompanying cheese. Each does double duty because it's made to split in the middle, so you can try one kind of cheese on one half and another on t'other, or sandwich them between.

Some Pied Piper took the country cheese and crackers to the corner saloon and led a free-lunch procession that never faltered till Prohibition came. The same old store cheese was soon pepped up as saloon cheese with a saucer of caraway seeds, bowls of pickles, peppers, pickled peppers and rye bread with plenty of mustard, pretzels or cheese straws, smearcase and schwarzbrot. Beer and cheese forever together, as in the free-lunch ditty of that great day:

It was there and then that cheese came of age from coast to coast. In every bar there was a choice of Swiss, Cottage, Limburger—manly cheeses, walkie-talkie oldsters that could sit up and beg, golden yellow, tangy mellow, always cut in cubes. Cheese takes the cube form as naturally as eggs take the oval and honeycombs the hexagon.

On the more elegant handout buffets, besides the shapely cubes, free Welsh Rabbit started at four every afternoon, to lead the tired businessman in by the nose; or a smear of Canadian Snappy out of a pure white porcelain pot in the classy places, on a Bent's water biscuit.

Next to nibbling cheese with crackers and appetizers, of which there is no end in sight, cheese sandwiches help us consume most of our country's enormous output of Brick, Cheddar and Swiss. To attempt to classify and describe all of these would be impossible, so we will content ourselves by picking a few of the cold and hot, the plain and the fancy, the familiar and the exotic. Let's use the alphabet to sum up the situation.

A     Alpine Club Sandwich

B     Boston Beany, Open-face

C     Cheeseburgers

D     Deviled Rye

E     Egg, Open-faced

F     French-fried Swiss

G     Grilled Chicken-Ham-Cheddar

H     He-man Sandwich, Open-faced

I     International Sandwich

J     Jurassiennes, or Croûtes Comtoises

K     Kümmelkäse

L     Limburger Onion or Limburger Catsup

M     Meringue, Open-faced (from the Browns' 10,000 Snacks)

N     Neufchâtel and Honey

O     Oskar's Ham-Cam

P     Pickled Camembert

Q     Queijo da Serra Sandwich

R     Roquefort Nut

S     Smoky Sandwich and Sturgeon-smoked Sandwich

T     Tangy Sandwich

U     Unusual Sandwich—of Flowers, Hay and Clover

V     Vegetarian Sandwich

W     Witch's Sandwich

X     Xochomilco Sandwich

Y     Yolk Picnic Sandwich

Z     Zebra

For good measure we will toss in a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches.

Toasted Cheese Sandwich

This toasted cheeser is so good it's positively sinful. The French, who outdo us in both cooking and sin, make one of their own in the form of fried fingers of stale bread doused in an 'arf and 'arf Welsh Rabbit and Fondue melting of Gruyère, that serves as a liaison to further sandwich the two.

Garlic is often used in place of chopped chives, and in contrast to this wild one there's a mild one made of Dutch cream cheese by the equally Dutch Pennsylvanians.

England, of course, together with Wales, holds all-time honors with such celebrated regional "toasting cheeses" as Devonshire and Dunlop. Even British Newfoundland is known for its simple version, that's quite as pleasing as its rich Prince Edward Island Oyster Stew.

Newfoundland Toasted Cheese Sandwich

"Fit for Drink"

Greece was the first country to prove its epicurean fitness, according to the old saying above, for it had wine to tipple and sheep's milk cheese to nibble. The classical Greek cheese has always been Feta, and no doubt this was the kind that Circe combined most suitably with wine to make a farewell drink for her lovers. She put further sweetness and body into the stirrup cup by stirring honey and barley meal into it. Today we might whip this up in an electric mixer to toast her memory.

While a land flowing with milk and honey is the ideal of many, France, Italy, Spain or Portugal, flowing with wine and honey, suit a lot of gourmets better. Indeed, in such vinous-caseous places cheese is on the house at all wine sales for prospective customers to snack upon and thus bring out the full flavor of the cellared vintages. But professional wine tasters are forbidden any cheese between sips. They may clear their palates with plain bread, but nary a crumb of Roquefort or cube of Gruyère in working hours, lest it give the wine a spurious nobility.

And, speaking of Roquefort, Romanée has the closest affinity for it. Such affinities are also found in Pont l'Evêque and Beaujolais, Brie and red champagne, Coulommiers and any good vin rosé. Heavenly marriages are made in Burgundy between red and white wines of both Côtes, de Nuits and de Baune, and Burgundian cheeses such as Epoisses, Soumaintarin and Saint-Florentin. Pommard and Port-Salut seem to be made for each other, as do Château Margaux and Camembert.

A great cheese for a great wine is the rule that brings together in the neighboring provinces such notables as Sainte Maure, Valençay, Vendôme and the Loire wines—Vouvray, Saumur and Anjou. Gruyère mates with Chablis, Camembert with St. Emilion; and any dry red wine, most commonly claret, is a fit drink for the hundreds of other fine French cheeses.

Every country has such happy marriages, an Italian standard being Provolone and Chianti. Then there is a most unusual pair, French Neufchâtel cheese and Swiss Neuchâtel wine from just across the border. Switzerland also has another cheese favorite at home—Trauben (grape cheese), named from the Neuchâtel wine in which it is aged.

One kind of French Neufchâtel cheese, Bondon, is also uniquely suited to the company of any good wine because it is made in the exact shape and size of a wine barrel bung. A similar relation is found in Brinzas (or Brindzas) that are packed in miniature wine barrels, strongly suggesting what should be drunk with such excellent cheeses: Hungarian Tokay. Other foreign cheeses go to market wrapped in vine leaves. The affinity has clearly been laid down in heaven.

Only the English seem to have a fortissimo taste in the go-with wines, according to these matches registered by André Simon in The Art of Good Living:

To these we might add brittle chips of Greek Casere with nips of Amontillado, for an eloquent appetizer.

The English also pour port into Stilton, and sundry other wines and liquors into Cheddars and such. This doctoring leads to fraudulent imitation, however, for either port or stout is put into counterfeit Cheshire cheese to make up for the richness it lacks.

While some combinations of cheeses and wines may turn out palatable, we prefer taking ours straight. When something more fiery is needed we can twirl the flecks of pure gold in a chalice of Eau de Vie de Danzig and nibble on legitimate Danzig cheese unadulterated. Goldwasser, or Eau de Vie, was a favorite liqueur of cheese-loving Franklin Roosevelt, and we can be sure he took the two separately.

Another perfect combination, if you can take it, is imported kümmel with any caraway-seeded cheese, or cream cheese with a handy saucer of caraway seeds. In the section of France devoted to gin, the juniper berries that flavor the drink also go into a local cheese, Fromage Fort. This is further fortified with brandy, white wine and pepper. One regional tipple with such brutally strong cheese is black coffee laced with gin.

French la Jonchée is another potted thriller with not only coffee and rum mixed in during the making, but orange flower water, too. Then there is la Petafina, made with brandy and absinthe; Hazebrook with brandy alone; and la Cachat with white wine and brandy.

In Italy white Gorgonzola is also put up in crocks with brandy. In Oporto the sharp cheese of that name is enlivened by port, Cider and the greatest of applejacks, Calvados, seem made to go the regional Calvados cheese. This is also true of our native Jersey Lightning and hard cider with their accompanying New York State cheese. In the Auge Valley of France, farmers also drink homemade cider with their own Augelot, a piquant kind of Pont l'Evêque.

The English sip pear cider (perry) with almost any British cheese. Milk would seem to be redundant, but Sage cheese and buttermilk do go well together.

Wine and cheese have other things in common. Some wines and some cheeses are aged in caves, and there are vintage cheeses no less than vintage wines, as is the case with Stilton.

Lazy Lou

Once, so goes the sad story, there was a cheesemonger unworthy of his heritage. He exported a shipload of inferior "Swiss" made somewhere in the U.S.A. Bad to begin with, it had worsened on the voyage. Rejected by the health authorities on the other side, it was shipped back, reaching home in the unhappy condition known as "cracked." To cut his losses the rascally cheesemonger had his cargo ground up and its flavor disguised with hot peppers and chili sauce. Thus there came into being the abortion known as the "cheese spread."

The cheese spread or "food" and its cousin, the processed cheese, are handy, cheap and nasty. They are available every where and some people even like them. So any cheese book is bound to take formal notice of their existence. I have done so—and now, an unfond farewell to them.

My academic cheese education began at the University of Wisconsin in 1904. I grew up with our great Midwest industry; I have read with profit hundreds of pamphlets put out by the learned Aggies of my Alma Mater. Mostly they treat of honest, natural cheeses: the making, keeping and enjoying of authentic Longhorn Cheddars, short Bricks and naturalized Limburgers.

At the School of Agriculture the students still, I am told, keep their hand in by studying the classical layout on a cheese board. One booklet recommends the following for freshman contemplation:

These six sturdy samples of Wisconsin's best will stimulate any amount of classroom discussion. Does the Edam go better with German-American black bread or with Swedish Ry-Krisp? To butter or not to butter? And if to butter, with which cheese? Salt or sweet? How close do we come to the excellence of the genuine Alpine Swiss? Primary school stuff, but not unworthy of thought.

Pass on down the years. You are now ready to graduate. Your cheese board can stand a more sophisticated setup. Try two boards; play the teams against each other.

The postgraduate may play the game using as counters the great and distinctive cheeses of more than fifty countries. Your Scandinavian board alone, just to give an idea of the riches available, will shine with blues, yellows, whites, smoky browns, and chocolates representing Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Lapland.

For the Britisher only blue-veined Stilton is worthy to crown the banquet. The Frenchman defends Roquefort, the Dane his own regal Blue; the Swiss sticks to Emmentaler before, during and after all three meals. You may prefer to finish with a delicate Brie, a smoky slice of Provolone, a bit of Baby Gouda, or some Liptauer Garniert, about which more later.

We load them all on Lazy Lou, Lazy Susan's big twin brother, a giant roulette wheel of cheese, every number a winner. A second Lazy Lou will bear the savories and go-withs. For these tidbits the English have a divine genius; think of the deviled shrimps, smoked oysters, herring roe on toast, snips of broiled sausage ... But we will make do with some olives and radishes, a few pickles, nuts, capers. With our two trusty Lazy Lous on hand plus wine or beer, we can easily dispense with the mere dinner itself.

Perhaps it is an Italian night. Then Lazy Lou is happily burdened with imported Latticini; Incanestrato, still bearing the imprint of its wicker basket; Pepato, which is but Incanestrato peppered; Mel Fina; deep-yellow, buttery Scanno with its slightly burned flavor; tangy Asiago; Caciocavallo, so called because the the cheeses, tied in pairs and hung over a pole, look as though they were sitting in a saddle—cheese on horseback, or "cacio a cavallo." Then we ring in Lazy Lou's first assistant, an old, silver-plated, revolving Florentine magnum-holder. It's designed to spin a gigantic flask of Chianti. The flick of a finger and the bottle is before you. Gently pull it down and hold your glass to the spout.

True, imported wines and cheeses are expensive. But native American products and reasonably edible imitations of the real thing are available as substitutes. Anyway, protein for protein, a cheese party will cost less than a steak barbecue. And it can be more fun.

Encourage your guests to contribute their own latest discoveries. One may bring along as his ticket of admission a Primavera from Brazil; another some cubes of an Andean specialty just flown in from Colombia's mountain city, Mérida, and still wrapped in its aromatic leaves of Frailejón Lanudo; another a few wedges of savory sweet English Flower cheese, some flavored with rose petals, others with marigolds; another a tube of South American Kräuterkäse.

Provide your own assortment of breads and try to include some of those fat, flaky old-fashioned crackers that country stores in New England can still supply. Mustard? Sure, if .you like it. If you want to be fancy, use a tricky little gadget put out by the Maille condiment-makers in France and available here in the food specialty shops. It's a miniature painter's palate holding five mustards of different shades and flavors and two mustard paddles. The mustards, in proper chromatic order, are: jonquil yellow "Strong Dijon"; "Green Herbs"; brownish "Tarragon"; golden "Ora"; crimson "Tomato-flavored."

And, just to keep things moving, we have restored an antique whirling cruet-holder to deliver Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, A-1, Tap Sauce and Major Grey's Chutney. Salt shakers and pepper mills are handy, with a big-holed tin canister filled with crushed red-pepper pods, chili powder, Hungarian-paprika and such small matters. Butter, both sweet and salt, is on hand, together with, saucers or bowls of curry, capers, chives (sliced, not chopped), minced onion, fresh mint leaves, chopped pimientos, caraway, quartered lemons, parsley, fresh tarragon, tomato slices, red and white radishes, green and black olives, pearl onions and assorted nutmeats.

Some years ago, when I was collaborating with my mother, Cora, and my wife, Rose, in writing 10,000 Snacks (which, by the way, devotes nearly forty pages to cheeses), we staged a rather elaborate tasting party just for the three of us. It took a two-tiered Lazy Lou to twirl the load.

The eight wedges on the top round were English and French samples and the lower one carried the rest, as follows:

The tasting began with familiar English Cheddars, Cheshires and Stiltons from the top row. We had cheese knives, scoops, graters, scrapers and a regulation wire saw, but for this line of crumbly Britishers fingers were best.

The Cheddar was a light, lemony-yellow, almost white, like our best domestic "bar cheese" of old.

The Cheshire was moldy and milky, with a slightly fermented flavor that brought up the musty dining room of Fleet Street's Cheshire cheese and called for draughts of beer. The Stilton was strong but mellow, as high in flavor as in price.

Only the rum-flavored Canadian Cheddar from Montreal (by courtesy English) let us down. It was done up as fancy as a bridegroom in waxed white paper and looked as smooth and glossy as a gardenia. But there its beauty ended. Either the rum that flavored it wasn't up to much or the mixture hadn't been allowed to ripen naturally.

The French Münster, however, was hearty, cheery, and better made than most German Münster, which at that time wasn't being exported much by the Nazis. The Brie was melting prime, the Camembert was so perfectly matured we ate every scrap of the crust, which can't be done with many American "Camemberts" or, indeed, with the dead, dry French ones sold out of season. Then came the Roquefort, a regal cheese we voted the best buy of the lot, even though it was the most expensive. A plump piece, pleasantly unctuous but not greasy, sharp in scent, stimulatingly bittersweet in taste—unbeatable. There is no American pretender to the Roquefort throne. Ours is invariably chalky and tasteless. That doesn't mean we have no good Blues. We have. But they are not Roquefort.

The Sapsago or Kräuterkäse from Switzerland (it has been made in the Canton of Glarus for over five hundred years) was the least expensive of the lot. Well-cured and dry, it lent itself to grating and tasted fine on an old-fashioned buttered soda cracker. Sapsago has its own seduction, derived from the clover-leaf powder with which the curd is mixed and which gives it its haunting flavor and spring-like sage-green color.

Next came some truly great Swiss Gruyère, delicately rich, and nutty enough to make us think of the sharp white wines to be drunk with it at the source.

As for the Provolone, notable for the water-buffalo milk that makes it, there's an example of really grown-up milk. Perfumed as spring flowers drenched with a shower of Anjou, having a bouquet all its own and a trace of a winelike kick, it made us vow never to taste another American imitation. Only a smooth-cheeked, thick slab cut from a pedigreed Italian Provolone of medium girth, all in one piece and with no sign of a crack, satisfy the gourmet.

The second Italian classic was Gorgonzola, gorgeous Gorgonzola, as fruity as apples, peaches and pears sliced together. It smells so much like a ripe banana we often eat them together, plain or with the crumbly formaggio lightly forked into the fruit, split lengthwise.

After that the Edam tasted too lipsticky, like the red-paint job on its rind, and the Gouda seemed only half-hearted. Both too obviously ready-made for commerce with nothing individual or custom-made about them, rolled or bounced over from Holland by the boat load.

The Ostiepki from Czechoslovakia might have been a link of smoked ostrich sausage put up in the skin of its own red neck. In spite of its pleasing lemon-yellow interior, we couldn't think of any use for it except maybe crumbling thirty or forty cents' worth into a ten-cent bowl of bean soup. But that seemed like a waste of money, so we set it aside to try in tiny chunks on crackers as an appetizer some other day, when it might be more appetizing.

We felt much the same about the chocolate-brown Norwegian Gjetost that looked like a slab of boarding-school fudge and which had the same cloying cling to the tongue. We were told by a native that our piece was entirely too young. That's what made it so insipid, undeveloped in texture and flavor. But the next piece we got turned out to be too old and decrepit, and so strong it would have taken a Paul Bunyan to stand up under it. When we complained to our expert about the shock to our palates, he only laughed, pointing to the nail on his little finger.

"You should take just a little bit, like that. A pill no bigger than a couple of aspirins or an Alka-Seltzer. It's only in the morning you take it when it's old and strong like this, for a pick-me-up, a cure for a hangover, you know, like a prairie oyster well soused in Worcestershire."

That made us think we might use it up to flavor a Welsh Rabbit, instead of the Worcestershire sauce, but we couldn't melt it with anything less than a blowtorch.

To bring the party to a happy end, we went to town on the Hungarian Liptauer, garnishing that fine, granulating buttery base after mixing it well with some cream cheese. We mixed the mixed cheese with sardine and tuna mashed together in a little of the oil from the can. We juiced it with lemon, sluiced it with bottled sauces, worked in the leftovers, some tarragon, mint, spicy seeds, parsley, capers and chives. We peppered and paprikaed it, salted and spiced it, then spread it thicker than butter on pumpernickel and went to it. That's Liptauer Garniert.

The A-B-Z of Cheese

Each cheese is listed by its name and country of origin, with any further information available. Unless otherwise indicated, the cheese is made of cow's milk.

A

Aberdeen
Scotland

Soft; creamy mellow.

Abertam
Bohemia (Made near Carlsbad)

Hard; sheep; distinctive, with a savory smack all its own.

Absinthe see Petafina.

Acidophilus see Saint-Ivel.

Aettekees
Belgium

November to May—winter-made and eaten.

Affiné, Carré see Ancien Impérial.

Affumicata, Mozzarella see Mozzarella.

After-dinner cheeses see Chapter 8.

Agricultural school cheeses see College-educated.

Aiguilles, Fromage d'
Alpine France

Named "Cheese of the Needles" from the sharp Alpine peaks of the district where it is made.

Aizy, Cendrée d' see Cendrée.

Ajacilo, Ajaccio
Corsica

Semihard; piquant; nut-flavor. Named after the chief city of French Corsica where a cheese-lover, Napoleon, was born.

à la Crème see Fromage, Fromage Blanc, Chevretons.

à la Main see Vacherin.

à la Pie see Fromage.

à la Rachette see Bagnes.

Albini
Northern Italy

Semihard; made of both goat and cow milk; white, mellow, pleasant-tasting table cheese.

Albula
Switzerland

Rich with the flavor of cuds of green herbs chewed into creamy milk that makes tasty curds. Made in the fertile Swiss Valley of Albula whose proud name it bears.

Alderney
Channel Islands

The French, who are fond of this special product of the very special breed of cattle named after the Channel Island of Alderney, translate it phonetically—Fromage d'Aurigny.

Alemtejo
Portugal

Called in full Queijo de Alemtejo, cheese of Alemtejo, in the same way that so many French cheeses carry along the fromage title. Soft; sheep and sometimes goat or cow; in cylinders of three sizes, weighing respectively about two ounces, one pound, and four pounds. The smaller sizes are the ones most often made with mixed goat and sheep milk. The method of curdling without the usual animal rennet is interesting and unusual. The milk is warmed and curdled with vegetable rennet made from the flowers of a local thistle, or cardoon, which is used in two other Portuguese cheeses—Queijo da Cardiga and Queijo da Serra da Estrella—and probably in many others not known beyond their locale. In France la Caillebotte is distinguished for being clabbered with chardonnette, wild artichoke seed. In Portugal, where there isn't so much separating of the sheep from the goats, it takes several weeks for Alemtejos to ripen, depending on the lactic content and difference in sizes.

Alfalfa see Sage.

Alise Saint-Reine
France

Soft; summer-made.

Allgäuer Bergkäse, Allgäuer Rundkäse, or Allgäuer Emmentaler
Bavaria

Hard; Emmentaler type. The small district of Allgäu names a mountain of cheeses almost as fabulous as our "Rock-candy Mountain." There are two principal kinds, vintage Allgäuer Bergkäse and soft Allgäuer Rahmkäse, described below. This celebrated cheese section runs through rich pasture lands right down and into the Swiss Valley of the Emme that gives the name Emmentaler to one of the world's greatest. So it is no wonder that Allgäuer Bergkäse can compete with the best Swiss. Before the Russian revolution, in fact, all vintage cheeses of Allgäu were bought up by wealthy Russian noblemen and kept in their home caves in separate compartments for each year, as far back as the early 1900's. As with fine vintage wines, the price of the great years went up steadily. Such cheeses were shipped to their Russian owners only when the chief cheese-pluggers of Allgäu found they had reached their prime.

Allgäuer Rahmkäse
Bavaria

Full cream, similar to Romadur and Limburger, but milder than both. This sets a high grade for similar cheeses made in the Bavarian mountains, in monasteries such as Andechs. It goes exquisitely with the rich dark Bavarian beer. Some of it is as slippery as the stronger, smellier Bierkäse, or the old-time Slipcote of England. Like so many North Europeans, it is often flavored with caraway. Although entirely different from its big brother, vintage Bergkäse, Rahmkäse can stand proudly at its side as one of the finest cheeses in Germany.

Alpe see Fiore di Alpe.

Al Pepe
Italy

Hard and peppery, like its name. Similar to Pepato (see).

Alpes
France

Similar to Bel Paese.

Alpestra
Austria

A smoked cheese that tastes, smells and inhales like whatever fish it was smoked with. The French Alps has a different Alpestre; Italy spells hers Alpestro.

Alpestre, Alpin, or Fromage de Briançon
France

Hard; goat; dry; small; lightly salted. Made at Briançon and Gap.

Alpestro
Italy

Semisoft; goat; dry; lightly salted.

Alpin or Clérimbert
Alpine France

The milk is coagulated with rennet at 80° F. in two hours. The curd is dipped into molds three to four inches in diameter and two and a half inches in height, allowed to drain, turned several times for one day only, then salted and ripened one to two weeks.

Altenburg, or Altenburger Ziegenkäse
Germany

Soft; goat; small and flat—one to two inches thick, eight inches in diameter, weight two pounds.

Alt Kuhkäse Old Cow Cheese
Germany

Hard; well-aged, as its simple name suggests.

Altsohl see Brinza.

Ambert, or Fourme d'Ambert
Limagne, Auvergne, France

A kind of Cheddar made from November to May and belonging to the Cantal—Fourme-La Tome tribe.

American, American Cheddar
U.S.A.

Described under their home states and distinctive names are a dozen fine American Cheddars, such as Coon, Wiscon sin, Herkimer County and Tillamook, to name only a few. They come in as many different shapes, with traditional names such as Daisies, Flats, Longhorns, Midgets, Picnics, Prints and Twins. The ones simply called Cheddars weigh about sixty pounds. All are made and pressed and ripened in about the same way, although they differ greatly in flavor and quality. They are ripened anywhere from two months to two years and become sharper, richer and more flavorsome, as well as more expensive, with the passing of time. See Cheddar states and Cheddar types in Chapter 4.

Americano Romano
U.S.A.

Hard; brittle; sharp.

Amou
Béarn, France

Winter cheese, October to May.

Anatolian
Turkey

Hard; sharp.

Anchovy Links
U.S.A.

American processed cheese that can be mixed up with anchovies or any fish from whitebait to whale, made like a sausage and sold in handy links.

Ancien Impérial
Normandy, France

Soft; fresh cream; white, mellow and creamy like Neufchâtel and made in the same way. Tiny bricks packaged in tin foil, two inches square, one-half inch thick, weighing three ounces. Eaten both fresh and when ripe. It is also called Carré and has separate names for the new and the old: (a) Petit Carré when newly made; (b) Carré Affiné, when it has reached a ripe old age, which doesn't take long—about the same time as Neufchâtel.

Ancona see Pecorino.

Andean
Venezuela

A cow's-milker made in the Andes near Mérida. It is formed into rough cubes and wrapped in the pungent, aromatic leaves of Frailejón Lanudo (Espeletia Schultzii) which imparts to it a characteristic flavor. (Description given in Buen Provecho! by Dorothy Kamen-Kaye.)

Andechs
Bavaria

A lusty Allgäuer type. Monk-made on the monastery hill at Andechs on Ammersee. A superb snack with equally monkish dark beer, black bread and blacker radishes, served by the brothers in dark brown robes.

Antwerp
Belgium

Semihard; nut-flavored; named after its place of origin.

Appenzeller
Switzerland, Bavaria and Baden

Semisoft Emmentaler type made in a small twenty-pound wheel—a pony-cart wheel in comparison to the big Swiss. There are two qualities: (a) Common, made of skim milk and cured in brine for a year; (b) Festive, full milk, steeped in brine with wine, plus white wine lees and pepper. The only cheese we know of that is ripened with lees of wine.

Appetitost
Denmark

Semisoft; sour milk; nutlike flavor. It's an appetizer that lives up to its name, eaten fresh on the spot, from the loose bottom pans in which it is made.

Appetost
Denmark

Sour buttermilk, similar to Primula, with caraway seeds added for snap. Imitated in U.S.A.

Apple U.S.A.

A small New York State Cheddar put up in the form of a red-cheeked apple for New York City trade. Inspired by the pear-shaped Provolone and Baby Gouda, no doubt.

Arber
Bohemia

Semihard; sour milk; yellow; mellow and creamy. Made in mountains between Bohemia and Silesia.

Argentine
Argentina

Argentina is specially noted for fine reproductions of classical Italian hard-grating cheeses such as Parmesan and Romano, rich and fruity because of the lush pampas-grass feeding.

Armavir
Western Caucasus

Soft; whole sour sheep milk; a hand cheese made by stirring cold, sour buttermilk or whey into heated milk, pressing in forms and ripening in a warm place. Similar to Hand cheese.

Arnauten see Travnik.

Arovature
Italy

Water-buffalo milk.

Arras, Coeurs d' see Coeurs.

Arrigny
Champagne, France

Made only in winter, November to May. Since gourmet products of the same province often have a special affinity, Arrigny and champagne are specially well suited to one another.

Artichoke, Cardoon or Thistle for Rennet see Caillebotte.

Artificial Dessert Cheese

In the lavish days of olde England Artificial Dessert Cheese was made by mixing one quart of cream with two of milk and spiking it with powdered cinnamon, nutmeg and mace. Four beaten eggs were then stirred in with one-half cup of white vinegar and the mixture boiled to a curd. It was then poured into a cheesecloth and hung up to drain six to eight hours. When taken out of the cloth it was further flavored with rose water, sweetened with castor sugar, left to ripen for an hour or two and finally served up with more cream.

Asadero, or Oaxaca
Jalisco and Oaxaca, Mexico

White; whole-milk. Curd is heated, and hot curd is cut and braided or kneaded into loaves from eight ounces to eleven pounds in weight Asadero means "suitable for roasting."

Asco
Corsica, France

Made only in the winter season, October to May.

Asiago I, II and III
Vicenza, Italy

Sometimes classed as medium and mild, depending mostly on age. Loaves weigh about eighteen pounds each and look like American Cheddar but have a taste all their own.

I. Mild, nutty and sharp, used for table slicing and eating.

II. Medium, semihard and tangy, also used for slicing until nine months old.

III. Hard, old, dry, sharp, brittle. When over nine months old, it's fine for grating.

Asin, or Water cheese
Northern Italy

Sour-milk; washed-curd; whitish; soft; buttery. Made mostly in spring and eaten in summer and autumn. Dessert cheese, frequently eaten with honey and fruit.

Au Cumin
see Münster.

Au Fenouil
see Tome de Savoie.

Au Foin and de Foin

A style of ripening "on the hay." See Pithiviers au Foin and Fromage de Foin.

Augelot
Valée d'Auge, Normandy, France

Soft; tangy; piquant Pont l'Evêque type.

d'Auray see Sainte-Anne.

Aurigny, Fromage d' see Alderney.

Aurillac see Bleu d'Auvergne.

Aurore and Triple Aurore
Normandy, France

Made and eaten all year.

Australian and New Zealand
Australia and New Zealand

Enough cheese is produced for local consumption, chiefly Cheddar; some Gruyère, but unfortunately mostly processed.

Autun
Nivernais, France

Produced and eaten all year. Fromage de Vache is another name for it and this is of special interest in a province where the chief competitors are made of goat's milk.

Auvergne, Bleu d' see Bleu.

Au Vin Blanc, Confits see Epoisses.

Avesnes, Boulette d' see Boulette.

Aydes, les
Orléanais, France

Not eaten during July, August or September. Season, October to June.

Azeitão, Queijo do
Portugal

Soft, sheep, sapid and extremely oily as the superlative ão implies. There are no finer, fatter cheeses in the world than those made of rich sheep milk in the mountains of Portugal and named for them.

Azeitoso
Portugal

Soft; mellow, zestful and as oily as it is named.

Azuldoch Mountain
Turkey

Mild and mellow mountain product.

B

Backsteiner
Bavaria

Resembles Limburger, but smaller, and translates Brick, from the shape. It is aromatic and piquant and not very much like the U.S. Brick.

Bagnes, or Fromage à la Raclette
Switzerland

Not only hard but very hard, named from racler, French for "scrape." A thick, one-half-inch slice is cut across the whole cheese and toasted until runny. It is then scraped off the pan it's toasted in with a flexible knife, spread on bread and eaten like an open-faced Welsh Rabbit sandwich.

Bagozzo, Grana Bagozzo, Bresciano
Italy

Hard; yellow; sharp. Surface often colored red. Parmesan type.

Bakers' cheese

Skim milk, similar to cottage cheese, but softer and finer grained. Used in making bakery products such as cheese cake, pie, and pastries, but may also be eaten like creamed cottage cheese.

Ball
U.S.A.

Made from thick sour milk in Pennsylvania in the style of the original Pennsylvania Dutch settlers.

Ballakäse or Womelsdorf

Similar to Ball.

Balls, Dutch Red

English name for Edam.

Banbury
England

Soft, rich cylinder about one inch thick made in the town of Banbury, famous for its spicy, citrus-peel buns and its equestrienne. Banbury cheese with Banbury buns made a sensational snack in the early nineteenth century, but both are getting scarce today.

Banick
Armenia

White and sweet.

Banjaluka
Bosnia

Port-Salut type from its Trappist monastery.

Banon, or les Petits Banons
Provence, France,

Small, dried, sheep-milker, made in the foothills of the Alps and exported through Marseilles in season, May to November. This sprightly summer cheese is generously sprinkled with the local brandy and festively wrapped in fresh green leaves.

Bar cheese
U.S.A.

Any saloon Cheddar, formerly served on every free-lunch counter in the U.S. Before Prohibition, free-lunch cheese was the backbone of America's cheese industry.

Barbacena
Minas Geraes, Brazil

Hard, white, sometimes chalky. Named from its home city in the leading cheese state of Brazil.

Barberey, or Fromage de Troyes
Champagne, France

Soft, creamy and smooth, resembling Camembert, five to six inches in diameter and 1¼ inches thick. Named from its home town, Barberey, near Troyes, whose name it also bears. Fresh, warm milk is coagulated by rennet in four hours. Uncut curd then goes into a wooden mold with a perforated bottom, to drain three hours, before being finished off in an earthenware mold. The cheeses are salted, dried and ripened three weeks in a cave. The season is from November to May and when made in summer they are often sold fresh.

Barboux
France

Soft.

Baronet
U.S.A.

A natural product, mild and mellow.

Barron
France

Soft.

Bassillac see Bleu.

Bath
England

Gently made, lightly salted, drained on a straw mat in the historic resort town of Bath. Ripened in two weeks and eaten only when covered with a refined fuzzy mold that's also eminently edible. It is the most delicate of English-speaking cheeses.

Battelmatt
Switzerland, St. Gothard Alps, northern Italy, and western Austria

An Emmentaler made small where milk is not plentiful. The "wheel" is only sixteen inches in diameter and four inches high, weighing forty to eighty pounds. The cooking of the curd is done at a little lower temperature than Emmentaler, it ripens more rapidly—in four months — and is somewhat softer, but has the same holes and creamy though sharp, full nutty flavor.

Bauden (see also Koppen)
Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Silesia

Semisoft, sour milk, hand type, made in herders' mountain huts in about the same way as Harzkäse, though it is bigger. In two forms, one cup shape (called Koppen), the other a cylinder. Strong and aromatic, whether made with or without caraway.

Bavarian Beer cheese see Bayrischer Bierkäse.

Bavarian Cream
German

Very soft; smooth and creamy. Made in the Bavarian mountains. Especially good with sweet wines and sweet sauces.

Bavarois à la Vanille see Fromage Bavarois.

Bayonne see Fromage de Bayonne.

Bayrischer Bierkäse
Bavaria

Bavarian beer cheese from the Tyrol is made not only to eat with beer, but to dunk in it.

Beads of cheese
Tibet

Beads of hard cheese, two inches in diameter, are strung like a necklace of cowrie shells or a rosary, fifty to a hundred on a string. Also see Money Made of Cheese.

Beagues see Tome de Savoie.

Bean Cake, Tao-foo, or Tofu
China, Japan, the Orient

Soy bean cheese imported from Shanghai and other oriental ports, and also imitated in every Chinatown around the world. Made from the milk of beans and curdled with its own vegetable rennet.

Beaujolais see Chevretons.

Beaumont, or Tome de Beaumont
Savoy, France

A more or less successful imitation of Trappist Tamie, a trade-secret triumph of Savoy. At its best from October to June.

Beaupré de Roybon
Dauphiné, France

A winter specialty made from November to April.

Beckenried
Switzerland

A good mountain cheese from goat milk.

Beer cheese
U.S.A.

While our beer cheese came from Germany and the word is merely a translation of Bierkäse, we use it chiefly for a type of strong Limburger made mostly in Milwaukee. This fine, aromatic cheese is considered by many as the very best to eat while drinking beer. But in Germany Bierkäse is more apt to be dissolved in a glass or stein of beer, much as we mix malted powder in milk, and drunk with it, rather than eaten.

Beer-Regis
Dorsetshire, England

This sounds like another beer cheese, but it's only a mild Cheddar named after its hometown in Dorsetshire.

Beist-Cheese
Scotland

A curiosity of the old days. "The first milk after a calving, boiled or baked to a thick consistency, the result somewhat resembling new-made cheese, though this is clearly not a true cheese." (MacNeill)

Belarno
Italy

Hard; goat; creamy dessert cheese.

Belgian Cooked
Belgium

The milk, which has been allowed to curdle spontaneously, is skimmed and allowed to drain. When dry it is thoroughly kneaded by hand and is allowed to undergo fermentation, which takes ordinarily from ten to fourteen days in winter and six to eight days in summer. When the fermentation is complete, cream and salt are added and the mixture is heated slowly and stirred until homogeneous, when it is put into molds and allowed to ripen for eight days longer. A cheese ordinarily weighs about three-and-a-half pounds. It is not essentially different from other forms of cooked cheese.

Beli Sir see Domaci.

Bellelay, Tête de Moine, or Monk's Head
Switzerland

Soft, buttery, semisharp spread. Sweet milk is coagulated with rennet in twenty to thirty minutes, the curd cut fairly fine and cooked not so firm as Emmentaler, but firmer than Limburger. After being pressed, the cheeses are wrapped in bark for a couple of weeks until they can stand alone. Since no eyes are desired in the cheeses, they are ripened in a moist cellar at a lowish temperature. They take a year to ripen and will keep three or four years. The diameter is seven inches, the weight nine to fifteen pounds. The monk's head after cutting is kept wrapped in a napkin soaked in white wine and the soft, creamy spread is scraped out to "butter" bread and snacks that go with more white wine. Such combinations of old wine and old cheese suggest monkish influence, which began here in the fifteenth century with the jolly friars of the Canton of Bern. There it is still made exclusively and not exported, for there's never quite enough to go around.

Bel Paese
Italy

See under Foreign Greats, Chapter 3. Also see Mel Fino, a blend, and Bel Paese types—French Boudanne and German Saint Stefano. The American imitation is not nearly so good as the Italian original.

Bel Paesino
U.S.A.

A play on the Bel Paese name and fame. Weight one pound and diminutive in every other way.

Bergkäse see Allgäuer.

Bergquara
Sweden

Semihard, fat, resembles Dutch Gouda. Tangy, pleasant taste. Gets sharper with age, as they all do. Molded in cylinders of fifteen to forty pounds. Popular in Sweden since the eighteenth century.

Berkeley
England

Named after its home town in Gloucester, England.

Berliner Kuhkäse
Berlin, Germany

Cow cheese, pet-named turkey cock cheese by Berlin students. Typical German hand cheese, soft; aromatic with caraway seeds, and that's about the only difference between it and Alt Kuhkäse, without caraway.

Bernarde, Formagelle Bernarde
Italy

Cow's whole milk, to which about 10% of goat's milk is added for flavor. Cured for two months.

Berques
France

Made of skim milk.

Berry Rennet see Withania.

Bessay, le
Bourbonnais, France

Soft, mild, and creamy.

Bexhill
England

Cream cheeses, small, flat, round. Excellent munching.

Bierkäse
Germany

There are several of these unique beer cheeses that are actually dissolved in a stein of beer and drunk down with it in the Bierstubes, notably Bayrischer, Dresdener, and Olmützer. Semisoft; aromatic; sharp. Well imitated in echt Deutsche American spots such as Milwaukee and Hoboken.

Bifrost
Norway

Goat; white; mildly salt. Imitated in a process spread in 4¼-ounce package.

Binn
Wallis, Switzerland

Exceptionally fine Swiss from the great cheese canton of Wallis.

Bitto
Northern Italy

Hard Emmentaler type made in the Valtellina. It is really two cheeses in one. When eaten fresh, it is smooth, sapid, big-eyed Swiss. When eaten after two years of ripening, it is very hard and sharp and has small eyes.

Blanc à la crème see Fromage Blanc.

Blanc see Fromage Blanc I and II.

Bleu
France

Brittle; blue-veined; smooth; biting.

Bleu d'Auvergne or Fromage Bleu
Auvergne, France

Hard; sheep or mixed sheep, goat or cow; from Pontgibaud and Laqueuille ripening caves. Similar to better-known Cantal of the same province. Akin to Roquefort and Stilton, and to Bleu de Laqueuille.

Bleu de Bassillac
Limousin, France

Blue mold of Roquefort type that's prime from November to May.

Bleu de Laqueuille
France

Similar to Bleu d'Auvergne, but with a different savor. Named for its originator, Antoine Roussel-Laqueuille, who first made it a century ago, in 1854.

Bleu de Limousin, Fromage
Lower Limousin

Practically the same as Bleu de Bassillac, from Lower Limousin.

Bleu de Salers
France

A variety of Bleu d'Auvergne from the same province distinguished for its blues that are green. With the majority, this is at its best only in the winter months, from November to May.

Bleu, Fromage see Bleu d'Auvergne.

Bleu-Olivet see Olivet.

Blind

The name for cheeses lacking the usual holes of the type they belong to, such as blind Swiss.

Block Edam
U.S.A.

U.S. imitation of the classical Dutch cheese named after the town of Edam.

Block, Smoked
Austria

The name is self-explanatory and suggests a well-colored meerschaum.

Bloder, or Schlicker Milch
Switzerland

Sour-milker.

Blue Cheddar see Cheshire-Stilton.

Blue, Danish see Danish Blue.

Blue Dorset see Dorset.

Blue, Jura see Jura Bleu and Septmoncel.

Blue, and Blue with Port Links
U.S.A.

One of the modern American process sausages.

Blue, Minnesota see Minnesota.

Blue Moon
U.S.A.

A process product.

Blue Vinny, Blue Vinid, Blue-veined Dorset, or Double Dorset
Dorsetshire, England

A unique Blue that actually isn't green-veined. Farmers make it for private consumption, because it dries up too easily to market. An epicurean esoteric match for Truckles No. 1 of Wiltshire. It comes in a flat form, chalk-white, crumbly and sharply flavored, with a "royal Blue" vein running right through horizontally. The Vinny mold, from which it was named, is different from all other cheese molds and has a different action.

Bocconi Geganti
Italy

Sharp and smoky specialty.

Bocconi Provoloni see Provolone.

Boîte see Fromage de Boîte.

Bombay
India

Hard; goat; dry; sharp. Good to crunch with a Bombay Duck in place of a cracker.

Bondes see Bondon de Neufchâtel.

Bondon de Neufchâtel, or Bondes
Normandy, France

Nicknamed Bonde à tout bien, from resemblance to the bung in a barrel of Neuchâtel wine. Soft, small loaf rolls, fresh and mild. Similar to Gournay, but sweeter because of 2% added sugar.

Bondon de Rouen
France

A fresh Neufchâtel, similar to Petit Suisse, but slightly salted, to last up to ten days.

Bondost
Sweden

When caraway seed is added this is called Kommenost, spelled Kuminost in Norway.

Bond Ost
U.S.A.

Imitation of Scandinavian cheese, with small production in Wisconsin.

Bon Larron
France

Romantically named "the penitent thief."

Borden's
U.S.A.

A full line of processed and naturals, of which Liederkranz is the leader.

Borelli
Italy

A small water-buffalo cheese.

Bossons Maceres
Provence, France

A winter product, December, January, February and March only.

Boudanne
France

Whole or skimmed cow's milk, ripens in two to three months.

Boudes, Boudon
Normandy, France

Soft, fresh, smooth, creamy, mild child of the Neufchâtel family.

Bougon Lamothe see Lamothe.

Bouillé, la
Normandy France

One of this most prolific province's thirty different notables. In season October to May.

Boule de Lille
France

Name given to Belgian Oude Kaas by the French who enjoy it.

Boulette d'Avesnes, or Boulette de Cambrai
Flanders, France

Made from November to May, eaten all year.

Bourgain
France

Type of fresh Neufchâtel made in France. Perishable and consumed locally.

Bourgognes see Petits Bourgognes.

Box
Württemberg, Germany

Similar to U.S. Brick. It comes in two styles; firm, and soft:

I. Also known as Schachtelkäse, Boxed Cheese; and Hohenheim, where it is made. A rather unimportant variety. Made in a copper kettle, with partially skim milk, colored with saffron and spiked with caraway, a handful to every two hundred pounds. Salted and ripened for three months and shipped in wooden boxes.

II. Also known by names of localities where made: Hohenburg, Mondess and Weihenstephan. Made of whole milk. Mild but piquant.

Bra No. I
Piedmont, Italy

Hard, round form, twelve inches in diameter, three inches high, weight twelve pounds. A somewhat romantic cheese, made by nomads who wander with their herds from pasture to pasture in the region of Bra.

Bra No. II
Turin and Cuneo, Italy

Soft, creamy, small, round and mild although cured in brine.

Brand or Brandkäse
Germany

Soft, sour-milk hand cheese, weighing one-third of a pound. The curd is cooked at a high temperature, then salted and set to ferment for a day. Butter is then mixed into it before pressing into small bricks. After drying it is put in used beer kegs to ripen and is frequently moistened with beer while curing.

Brandy see Caledonian, Cream.

Branja de Brailia
Rumania

Hard; sheep; extra salty because always kept in brine.

Branja de Cosulet
Rumania

Described by Richard Wyndham in Wine and Food (Winter, 1937): A creamy sheep's cheese which is encased in pine bark. My only criticism of this most excellent cheese is that the center must always remain a gastronomical second best. It is no more interesting than a good English Cheddar, while the outer crust has a scented, resinous flavor which must be unique among cheeses.

Bratkäse
Switzerland

Strong; specially made to roast in slices over coal. Fine, grilled on toast.

Breakfast, Frühstück, Lunch, Delikat, and other names
Germany

Soft and delicate, but with a strong tang. Small round, for spreading. Lauterbach is a well-known breakfast cheese in Germany, while in Switzerland Emmentaler is eaten at all three meals.

Breakstone
U.S.A.

Like Borden and other leading American cheesemongers and manufacturers, Breakstone offer a full line, of which their cream cheese is an American product to be proud of.

Brésegaut
Savoy, France

Soft, white.

Breslau
Germany

A proud Prussian dessert cheese.

Bressans see les Petits.

Bresse
France

Lightly cooked.

Bretagne see Montauban.

Brevine
Switzerland

Emmentaler type.

Briançon see Alpin.

Brick see Chapter 4.

Brickbat
Wiltshire, England

A traditional Wiltshire product since early in the eighteenth century. Made with fresh milk and some cream, to ripen for one year before "it's fit to eat." The French call it Briqueton.

Bricotta
Corsica

Semisoft, sour sheep, sometimes mixed with sugar and rum and made into small luscious cakes.

Brie see Chapter 3; also see Cendré and Coulommiers.

Brie Façon
France

The name of imitation Brie or Brie type made in all parts of France. Often it is dry, chalky, and far inferior to the finest Brie véritable that is still made best in its original home, formerly called La Brie, now Seine et Marne, or Ile-de-France.

see Nivernais Decize, Le Mont d'Or, and Ile-de-France.

Brie de Meaux
France

This genuine Brie from the Meaux region has an excellent reputation for high quality. It is made only from November to May.

Brie de Melun
France

This Brie véritable is made not only in the seasonal months, from November to May, but practically all the year around. It is not always prime. Summer Brie, called Maigre, is notably poor and thin. Spring Brie is merely Migras, half-fat, as against the fat autumn Gras that ripens until May.

Brillat-Savarin
Normandy, France

Soft, and available all year. Although the author of Physiologie du Goût was not noted as a caseophile and wrote little on the subject beyond Le Fondue (see Chapter 6), this savory Normandy produce is named in his everlasting praise.

Brina Dubreala
Rumania

Semisoft, sheep, done in brine.

Brindza
U.S.A.

Our imitation of this creamy sort of fresh, white Roquefort is as popular in foreign colonies in America as back in its Hungarian and Greek homelands. On New York's East Side several stores advertise "Brindza fresh daily," with an extra "d" crowded into the original Brinza.

Brine see Italian Bra, Caucasian Ekiwani, Brina Dubreala, Briney.

Briney, or Brined
Syria

Semisoft, salty, sharp. So-called from being processed in brine. Turkish Tullum Penney is of the same salt-soaked type.

Brinza, or Brinsen
Hungary, Rumania, Carpathian Mountains

Goes by many local names: Altsohl, Klencz, Landoch, Liptauer, Neusohl, Siebenburgen and Zips. Soft, sheep milk or sheep and goat; crumbly, sharp and biting, but creamy. Made in small lots and cured in a tub with beech shavings. Ftinoporino is its opposite number in Macedonia.

Brioler see Westphalia.

Briquebec see Providence

Briqueton
England

The French name for English Wiltshire Brickbat, one of the very few cheeses imported into France. Known in France in the eighteenth century, it may have influenced the making of Trappist Port-Salut at the Bricquebec Monastery in Manche.

Brittle see Greek Cashera, Italian Ricotta, Turkish Rarush Durmar, and U.S. Hopi.

Brizecon
Savoy, France

Imitation Reblochon made in the same Savoy province.

Broccio, or le Brocconis
Corsica, France

Soft, sour sheep milk or goat, like Bricotta and a first cousin to Italian Chiavari. Cream white, slightly salty; eaten fresh in Paris, where it is as popular as on its home island. Sometimes salted and half-dried, or made into little cakes with rum and sugar. Made and eaten all year.

Broodkaas
Holland

Hard, flat, nutty.

Brousses de la Vézubie, les
Nice, France

Small; sheep; long narrow bar shape, served either with powdered sugar or salt, pepper and chopped chives. Made in Vézubie.

Brussels or Bruxelles
Belgium

Soft, washed skim milk, fermented, semisharp, from Louvain and Hal districts.

Budapest
Hungary

Soft, fresh, creamy and mellow, a favorite at home in Budapest and abroad in Vienna.

Buderich
Germany

A specialty in Dusseldorf.

Bulle
Switzerland

A Swiss-Gruyère.

Bundost
Sweden

Semihard; mellow; tangy.

Burgundy
France

Named after the province, not the wine, but they go wonderfully together.

Bushman
Australia

Semihard; yellow; tangy.

Butter and Cheese see Chapter 8.

"Butter," Serbian see Kajmar.

Buttermilk
U.S. & Europe

Resembles cottage cheese, but of finer grain.

C

Cabeçou, le
Auvergne, France

Small; goat; from Maurs.

Cabrillon
Auvergne, France

So much like the Cabreçon they might be called sister nannies under the rind.

Cachet d'Entrechaux, le, or Fromage Fort du Ventoux

Provence Mountains, France

Semihard; sheep; mixed with brandy, dry white wine and sundry seasonings. Well marinated and extremely strong. Season May to November.

Caciocavallo
Italy

"Horse Cheese." The ubiquitous cheese of classical greats, imitated all around the world and back to Italy again. See Chapter 3.

Caciocavallo Siciliano
Sicily, also in U.S.A.

Essentially a pressed Provolone. Usually from cow's whole milk, but sometimes from goat's milk or a mixture of the two. Weight between 17½ and 26 pounds. Used for both table cheese and grating.

Cacio Fiore, or Caciotta
Italy

Soft as butter; sheep; in four-pound square frames; sweetish; eaten fresh.

Cacio Pecorino Romano see Pecorino.

Cacio Romano see Chiavari.

Caerphilly
Wales and England—Devon, Dorset, Somerset & Wilshire

Semihard; whole fresh milk; takes three weeks to ripen. Also sold "green," young and innocent, at the age of ten to eleven days when weighing about that many pounds. Since it has little keeping qualities it should be eaten quickly. Welsh miners eat a lot of it, think it specially suited to their needs, because it is easily digested and does not produce so much heat in the body as long-keeping cheeses.

Caillebottes (Curds)
France—Anjou, Poitou, Saintonge & Vendée

Soft, creamy, sweetened fresh or sour milk clabbered with chardonnette, wild artichoke seed, over slow fire. Cut in lozenges and served cold not two hours after cooking. Smooth, mellow and aromatic. A high type of this unusual cheese is Jonchée (see). Other cheeses are made with vegetable rennet, some from similar thistle or cardoon juice, especially in Portugal.

Caille de Poitiers see Petits pots.

Caille de Habas
Gascony, France

Clabbered or clotted sheep milk.

Cajassou
Périgord, France

A notable goat cheese made in Cubjac.

Calabrian
Italy

The Calabrians make good sheep cheese, such as this and Caciocavallo.

Calcagno
Sicily

Hard; ewe's milk. Suitable for grating.

Caledonian Cream
Scotland

More of a dessert than a true cheese. We read in Scotland's Inner Man: "A sort of fresh cream cheese, flavored with chopped orange marmalade, sugar brandy and lemon juice. It is whisked for about half an hour. Otherwise, if put into a freezer, it would be good ice-pudding."

Calvados
France

Medium-hard; tangy. Perfect with Calvados applejack from the same province.

Calvenzano
Italy

Similar to Gorgonzola, made in Bergamo.

Cambrai see Boulette.

Cambridge, or York
England

Soft; fresh; creamy; tangy. The curd is quickly made in one hour and dipped into molds without cutting to ripen for eating in thirty hours.

Camembert see Chapter 3.

"Camembert"
Germany, U.S. & elsewhere

A West German imitation that comes in a cute little heart-shaped box which nevertheless doesn't make it any more like the Camembert véritable of Normandy.

Camosun
U.S.A.

Semisoft; open-textured, resembling Monterey. Drained curd is pressed in hoops, cheese is salted in brine for thirty hours, then coated with paraffin and cured for one to three months in humid room at 50° to 60° F.

Canadian Club
see Cheddar Club.

Cancoillotte, Cancaillotte, Canquoillotte, Quincoillotte, Cancoiade, Fromagère, Tempête and "Purée" de fromage tres fort
Franche-Comté, France

Soft; sour milk; sharp and aromatic; with added eggs and butter and sometimes brandy or dry white wine. Sold in attractive small molds and pots. Other sharp seasonings besides the brandy or wine make this one of the strongest of French strong cheeses, similar to Fromage Fort.

Canestrato
Sicily, Italy

Hard; mixed goat and sheep; yellow and strong. Takes one year to mature and is very popular both in Sicily where it is made to perfection and in Southern Colorado where it is imitated by and for Italian settlers.

Cantal, Fromage de Cantal, Auvergne or Auvergne Bleu; also Fourme and La Tome.
Auvergne, France

Semihard; smooth; mellow; a kind of Cheddar, lightly colored lemon; yellow; strong, sharp taste but hardly any smell. Forty to a hundred-twenty pound cylinders. The rich milk from highland pastures is more or less skimmed and, being a very old variety, it is still made most primitively. Cured six weeks or six months, and when very old it's very hard and very sharp. A Cantal type is Laguiole or Guiole.

Capitanata
Italy

Sheep.

Caprian
Capri, Italy

Made from milk of goats that still overrun the original Goat Island, and tangy as a buck.

Caprino (Little Goat)
Argentina

Semihard; goat; sharp; table cheese.

Caraway Loaf
U.S.A.

This is just one imitation of dozens of German caraway-seeded cheeses that roam the world. In Germany there is not only Kümmel loaf cheese but a loaf of caraway-seeded bread to go with it. Milwaukee has long made a good Kümmelkäse or hand cheese and it would take more than the fingers on both hands to enumerate all of the European originals, from Dutch Komynkaas through Danish King Christian IX and Norwegian Kuminost, Italian Freisa, Pomeranian Rinnen and Belgian Leyden, to Pennsylvania Pot.

Cardiga, Queijo da
Portugal

Hard; sheep; oily; mild flavor. Named from cardo, cardoon in English, a kind of thistle used as a vegetable rennet in making several other cheeses, such as French Caillebottes curdled with chardonnette, wild artichoke seed. Only classical Greek sheep cheeses like Casera can compare with the superb ones from the Portuguese mountain districts. They are lusciously oily, but never rancidly so.

Carlsbad
Bohemia

Semihard; sheep; white; slightly salted; expensive.

Carré Affiné
France

Soft, delicate, in small square forms; similar to Petit Carré and Ancien Impérial (see).

Carré de l'Est
France

Similar to Camembert, and imitated in the U.S.A.

Cascaval Penir
Turkey

Cacciocavallo imitation consumed at home.

Caseralla
Greece

Semisoft; sheep; mellow; creamy.

Casere
Greece

Hard; sheep; brittle; gray and greasy. But wonderful! Sour-sweet tongue tickle. This classical though greasy Grecian is imitated with goat milk instead of sheep in Southern California.

Cashera
Armenia and Greece

Hard; goat or cow's milk; brittle; sharp; nutty. Similar to Casere and high in quality.

Cashera
Turkey

Semihard; sheep.

Casher Penner see Kasher.

Cashkavallo
Syria

Mellow but sharp imitation of the ubiquitous Italian Cacciocavallo.

Casigiolu, Panedda, Pera di vacca
Sardinia

Plastic-curd cheese, made by the Caciocavallo method.

Caskcaval or Kaschcavallo see Feta.

Caspian
Caucasus

Semihard. Sheep or cow, milked directly into cone-shaped cloth bag to speed the making. Tastes tangy, sharp and biting.

Cassaro
Italy

Locally consumed, seldom exported.

Castelmagno
Italy

Blue-mold, Gorgonzola type.

Castelo Branco, White Castle
Portugal

Semisoft; goat or goat and sheep; fermented. Similar to Serra da Estrella (see).

Castillon, or Fromage de Gascony
France

Fresh cream cheese.

Castle, Schlosskäse
North Austria

Limburger type.

Catanzaro
Italy

Consumed locally, seldom exported.

Cat's Head see Katzenkopf.

Celery
Norway

Flavored mildly with celery seeds, instead of the usual caraway.

Cendrée, la
France—Orléanais, Blois & Aube

Hard; sheep; round and flat. Other Cendrées are Champenois or Ricey, Brie, d'Aizy and Olivet

Cendré d'Aizy
Burgundy, France

Available all year. See la Cendrée.

Cendré de la Brie
Ile-de-France, France

Fall and winter Brie cured under the ashes, season September to May.

Cendré Champenois or Cendré des Riceys
Aube & Marne, France

Made and eaten from September to June, and ripened under the ashes.

Cendré Olivet see Olivet.

Cenis see Mont Cenis.

Certoso Stracchino
Italy, near Milan

A variety of Stracchino named after the Carthusian friars who have made it for donkey's years. It is milder and softer and creamier than the Taleggio because it's made of cow instead of goat milk, but it has less distinction for the same reason.

Ceva
Italy

Soft veteran of Roman times named from its town near Turin.

Chabichou
Poitou, France

Soft; goat; fresh; sweet and tasty. A vintage cheese of the months from April to December, since such cheeses don't last long enough to be vintaged like wine by the year.

Chaingy
Orléans, France

Season September to June.

Cham
Switzerland

One of those eminent Emmentalers from Cham, the home town of Mister Pfister (see Pfister).

Chamois milk

Aristotle said that the most savorous cheese came from the chamois. This small goatlike antelope feeds on wild mountain herbs not available to lumbering cows, less agile sheep or domesticated mountain goats, so it gives, in small quantity but high quality, the richest, most flavorsome of milk.

Champenois or Fromage des Riceys
Aube & Marne, France

Season from September to June. The same as Cendré Champenois and des Riceys.

Champoléon de Queyras
Hautes-Alpes, France.

Hard; skim-milker.

Chantelle
U.S.A.

Natural Port du Salut type described as "zesty" by some of the best purveyors of domestic cheeses. It has a sharp taste and little odor, perhaps to fill the demand for a "married man's Limburger."

Chantilly see Hablé.

Chaource
Champagne, France

Soft, nice to nibble with the bottled product of this same high-living Champagne Province. A kind of Camembert.

Chapelle
France

Soft.

Charmey Fine
Switzerland

Gruyère type.

Chaschol, or Chaschosis
Canton of Grisons, Switzerland

Hard; skim; small wheels, eighteen to twenty-two inches in diameter by three to four inches high, weight twenty-two to forty pounds.

Chasteaux see Petits Fromages.

Chateauroux see Fromage de Chèvre.

Chaumont
Champagne, France

Season November to May.

Chavignol see Crottin.

Chechaluk
Armenia

Soft; pot; flaky; creamy.

Cheddar see Chapter 3.

Cheese bread
Russia and U.S.A.

For centuries Russia has excelled in making a salubrious cheese bread called Notruschki and the cheese that flavors it is Tworog. (See both.) Only recently Schrafft's in New York put out a yellow, soft and toothsome cheese bread that has become very popular for toasting. It takes heat to bring out its full cheesy savor. Good when overlaid with cheese butter of contrasting piquance, say one mixed with Sapsago.

Cheese butter

Equal parts of creamed butter and finely grated or soft cheese and mixtures thereof. The imported but still cheap green Sapsago is not to be forgotten when mixing your own cheese butter.

Cheese food
U.S.A.

"Any mixtures of various lots of cheese and other solids derived from milk with emulsifying agents, coloring matter, seasonings, condiments, relishes and water, heated or not, into a homogeneous mass." (A long and kind word for a homely, tasteless, heterogeneous mess.) From an advertisement

Cheese hoppers see Hoppers.

Cheese mites see Mites.

Cheshire and Cheshire imitations see with Cheddar in Chapter 3.

Cheshire-Stilton
England

In making this combination of Cheshire and Stilton, the blue mold peculiar to Stilton is introduced in the usual Cheshire process by keeping out each day a little of the curd and mixing it with that in which the mold is growing well. The result is the Cheshire in size and shape and general characteristics but with the blue veins of Stilton, making it really a Blue Cheddar. Another combination is Yorkshire-Stilton, and quite as distinguished.

Chester
England

Another name for Cheshire, used in France where formerly some was imported to make the visiting Britishers feel at home.

Chevalier
France

Curds sweetened with sugar.

Chevèlle
U.S.A.

A processed Wisconsin.

Chèvre see Fromages.

Chèvre de Chateauroux see Fromages.

Chèvre petit see Petìts Fromages.

Chèvre, Tome de see Tome.

Chevretin
Savoy, France

Goat; small and square. Named after the mammy nanny, as so many are.

Chevrets, Ponta & St. Rémy
Bresse & Franche-Comté, France

Dry and semi-dry; crumbly; goat; small squares; lightly salted. Season December to April. Such small goat cheeses are named in the plural in France.

Chevretons du Beaujolais à la crème, les
Lyonnais, France

Small goat-milkers served with cream. This is a fair sample of the railroad names some French cheeses stagger under.

Chevrotins
Savoy, France

Soft, dried goat milk; white; small; tangy and semi-tangy. Made and eaten from March to December.

Chhana
Asia

All we know is that this is made of the whole milk of cows, soured, and it is not as unusual as the double "h" in its name.

Chiavari
Italy

There are two different kinds named for the Chiavari region, and both are hard:
I. Sour cow's milk, also known as Cacio Romano.
II. Sweet whole milker, similar to Corsican Broccio. Chiavari, the
historic little port between Genoa and Pisa, is more noted as the
birthplace of the barbaric "chivaree" razzing of newlyweds with
its raucous serenade of dishpans, sour-note bugling and such.

Chives cream cheese

Of the world's many fine fresh cheeses further freshened with chives, there's Belgian Hervé and French Claqueret (with onion added). (See both.) For our taste it's best when the chives are added at home, as it's done in Germany, in person at the table or just before.

Christalinna
Canton Graubünden, Switzerland

Hard; smooth; sharp; tangy.

Christian IX
Denmark

A distinguished spiced cheese.

Ciclo
Italy

Soft, small cream cheese.

Cierp de Luchon
France

Made from November to May in the Comté de Foix, where it has the distinction of being the only local product worth listing with France's three hundred notables.

Citeaux
Burgundy, France

Trappist Port-Salut.

Clabber cheese
England

Simply cottage cheese left in a cool place until it grows soft and automatically changes its name from cottage to clabber.

Clairvaux
France

Formerly made in a Benedictine monastery of that name.

Claqueret, le
Lyonnais, France

Fresh cream whipped with chives, chopped fine with onions. See Chives.

Clérimbert see Alpin.

Cleves
France

French imitation of the German imitation of a Holland-Dutch original.

Cloves see Nagelkäse.

Club, Potted Club, Snappy, Cold-pack and Comminuted cheese
U.S.A. and Canada

Probably McLaren's Imperial Club in pots was first to be called club, but others credit club to the U.S. In any case McLaren's was bought by an American company and is now all-American.

Today there are many clubs that may sound swanky but taste very ordinary, if at all. They are made of finely ground aged, sharp Cheddar mixed with condiments, liquors, olives, pimientos, etc., and mostly carry come-on names to make the customers think they are getting something from Olde England or some aristocratic private club. All are described as "tangy."

Originally butter went into the better clubs which were sold in small porcelain jars, but in these process days they are wrapped in smaller tin foil and wax-paper packets and called "snappy."

Cocktail Cheeses

Recommended from stock by Phil Alpert's "Cheeses of all Nations" stores:

Argentine aged Gruyère
Canadian d'Oka
French Bleu
Brie
Camembert
Fontainebleu
Pont l'Evêque
Port du Salut
Roblochon
Roquefort
Grecian Feta
Hungarian Brinza
Polish Warshawski Syr
Rumanian Kaskaval
Swiss Schweizerkäse
American Cheddar in brandy
Hopi Indian

Coeur à la Crème
Burgundy, France

This becomes Fromage à la Crème II (see) when served with sugar, and it is also called a heart of cream after being molded into that romantic shape in a wicker or willow-twig basket.

Coeurs d'Arras
Artois, France

These hearts of Arras are soft, smooth, mellow, caressingly rich with the cream of Arras.

Coffee-flavored cheese

Just as the Dutch captivated coffee lovers all over the world with their coffee-flavored candies, Haagische Hopjes, so the French with Jonchée cheese and Italians with Ricotta satisfy the universal craving by putting coffee in for flavor.

Coimbra
Portugal

Goat or cow; semihard; firm; round; salty; sharp. Not only one of those college-educated cheeses but a postgraduate one, bearing the honored name of Portugal's ancient academic center.

Colby
U.S.A.

Similar to Cheddar, but of softer body and more open texture. Contains more moisture, and doesn't keep as well as Cheddar.

College-educated

Besides Coimbra several countries have cheeses brought out by their colleges. Even Brazil has one in Minas Geraes and Transylvania another called Kolos-Monostor, while our agricultural colleges in every big cheese state from California through Ames in Iowa, Madison in Wisconsin, all across the continent to Cornell in New York, vie with one another in turning out diploma-ed American Cheddars and such of high degree. It is largely to the agricultural colleges that we owe the steady improvement in both quality and number of foreign imitations since the University of Wisconsin broke the curds early in this century by importing Swiss professors to teach the high art of Emmentaler.

Colwick see Slipcote.

Combe-air
France

Small; similar to Italian Stracchino in everything but size.

Commission
Holland

Hard; ball-shaped like Edam and resembling it except being darker in color and packed in a ball weighing about twice as much, around eight pounds. It is made in the province of North Holland and in Friesland. It is often preferred to Edam for size and nutty flavor.

Compiègne
France

Soft

Comté see Gruyère.

Conches
France

Emmentaler type.

Condrieu, Rigotte de la
Rhone Valley below Lyons, France

Semihard; goat; small; smooth; creamy; mellow; tasty. A cheese of cheeses for epicures, only made from May to November when pasturage is rich.

Confits au Marc de Bourgogne see Epoisses.

Confits au Vin Blanc see Epoisses.

Cooked, or Pennsylvania pot
U.S.A.

Named from cooking sour clabbered curd to the melting point. When cool it is allowed to stand three or four days until it is colored through. Then it is cooked again with salt, milk, and usually caraway. It is stirred until it's as thick as molasses and strings from a spoon. It is then put into pots or molds, whose shape it retains when turned out.

All cooked cheese is apt to be tasteless unless some of the milk flavor cooked out is put back in, as wheat germ is now returned to white bread. Almost every country has a cooked cheese all its own, with or without caraway, such as the following:

Belgium—Kochtounkäse
Germany—Kochkäse, Topfen
Luxembourg—Kochenkäse
France—Fromage Ouit & Le P'Teux
Sardinia—Pannedas, Freisa

Coon see Chapter 4.

Cornhusker
U.S.A.

A Nebraska product similar to Cheddar and Colby, but with softer body and more moisture.

Cornimont
Vosges, France

A splendid French version of Alsatian Münster spiked with caraway, in flattish cylinders with mahogany-red coating. It is similar to Géromé and the harvest cheese of Gérardmer in the same lush Vosges Valley.

Corse, Roquefort de
Corsica, France

Corsican imitation of the real Roquefort, and not nearly so good, of course.

Cossack
Caucasus

Cow or sheep. There are two varieties: I. Soft, cured in brine and still soft and mild after two months in
the salt bath.
II. Semihard and very sharp after aging in brine for a year or more.

Cotherstone
Yorkshire, England

Also known as Yorkshire-Stilton, and Wensleydale No. I. (See both.)

Cotrone, Cotronese see Pecorino.

Cotta see Pasta.

Cottage cheese

Made in all countries where any sort of milk is obtainable. In America it's also called pot, Dutch, and smearcase. The English, who like playful names for homely dishes, call cottage cheese smearcase from the German Schmierkäse. It is also called Glumse in Deutschland, and, together with cream, formed the basis of all of our fine Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine.

Cottenham or Double Cottenham
English Midlands

Semihard; double cream; blue mold. Similar to Stilton but creamier and richer, and made in flatter and broader forms.

Cottslowe
Cotswold, England

A brand of cream cheese named for its home in Cotswold, Gloucester. Although soft, it tastes like hard Cheddar.

Coulommiers Frais, or Petit-Moule
Ile-de-France, France

Fresh cream similar to Petit Suisse. (See.)

Coulommiers, le, or Brie de Coulommiers
France

Also called Petit-moule, from its small form. This genuine Brie is a pocket edition, no larger than a Camembert, standing only one inch high and measuring five or six inches across. It is made near Paris and is a great favorite from the autumn and winter months, when it is made, on until May. The making starts in October, a month earlier than most Brie, and it is off the market by July, so it's seldom tasted by the avalanche of American summer tourists.

Cow cheese

Sounds redundant, and is used mostly in Germany, where an identifying word is added, such as Berliner Kuhkäse and Alt Kuhkäse: old cow cheese.

Cream cheese
International

England, France and America go for it heavily. English cream begins with Devonshire, the world-famous, thick fresh cream that is sold cool in earthenware pots and makes fresh berries—especially the small wild strawberries of rural England—taste out of this world. It is also drained on straw mats and formed into fresh hardened cheeses in small molds. (See Devonshire cream.) Among regional specialties are the following, named from their place of origin or commercial brands:

Cambridge
Cottslowe
Cornwall
Farm Vale
Guilford
Homer's
"Italian"
Lincoln
New Forest
Rush (from being made on rush or straw mats—see Rush)
St. Ivel (distinguished for being made with acidophilus bacteria)
Scotch Caledonian
Slipcote (famous in the eighteenth century)
Victoria
York

Crème Chantilly see Hablé.

Crème de Gien see Fromage.

Crème de Gruyère
Franche-Comté France

Soft Gruyère cream cheese, arrives in America in perfect condition in tin foil packets. Expensive but worth it.

Crème des Vosges
Alsace, France

Soft cream. Season October to April.

Crème Double see Double-Crème.

Crème, Fromage à la see Fromage.

Crème, Fromage Blanc à la see Fromage Blanc.

Crème St Gervais see Pots de Crème St Gervais.

Crèmet Nantais
Lower Loire, France

Soft fresh cream of Nantes.

Crèmets, les
Anjou, France

A fresh cream equal to English Devonshire, served more as a dessert than a dessert cheese. The cream is whipped stiff with egg whites, drained and eaten with more fresh cream, sprinkled with vanilla and sugar.

Cremini
Italy

Soft, small cream cheese from Cremona, the violin town. And by the way, art-loving Italians make ornamental cheeses in the form of musical instruments, statues, still life groups and everything.

Creole
Louisiana, U.S.A.

Soft, rich, unripened cottage cheese type, made by mixing cottage-type curd and rich cream.

Crescenza, Carsenza, Stracchino Crescenza, Crescenza Lombardi
Lombardy, Italy

Uncooked; soft; creamy; mildly sweet; fast-ripening; yellowish; whole milk. Made from September to April.

Creuse
Creuse, France

A two-in-one farm cheese of skimmed milk, resulting from two different ways of ripening, after the cheese has been removed from perforated earthen molds seven inches in diameter and five or six inches high, where it has drained for several days:
I. It is salted and turned frequently until very dry and hard.
II. It is ripened by placing in tightly closed mold, lined with straw.
This softens, flavors, and turns it golden-yellow. (See Hay
or Fromage de Foin.)

Creusois, or Guéret
Limousin, France

Season, October to June.

Croissant Demi-sel
France

Soft, double cream, semisalty. All year.

Crottin de Chavignol
Berry, France

Semihard; goat's milk; small; lightly salted; mellow. In season April to December. The name is not exactly complimentary.

Crowdie, or Cruddy butter
Scotland

Named from the combination of fresh sweet milk curds pressed together with fresh butter. A popular breakfast food in Inverness and the Ross Shires. When kept for months it develops a high flavor. A similar curd and butter is made by Arabs and stored in vats, the same as in India, the land of ghee, where there's no refrigeration.

Crying Kebbuck

F. Marion MacNeill, in The Scots Kitchen says that this was the name of a cheese that used to be part of the Kimmers feast at a lying-in.

Cuajada see Venezuela.

Cubjac see Cajassou.

Cuit see Fromage Cuit.

Cumin, Münster au see Münster.

Cup see Koppen.

Curd see Granular curd, Sweet curd and York curd.

Curds and butter
Arabia

Fresh sweet milk curd and fresh butter are pressed together as in making Crowdie or Cruddy butter in Scotland. The Arabs put this strong mixture away in vats to get it even stronger than East Indian ghee.

Curé, Fromage de see Nantais.

D

Daisies, fresh

A popular type and packaging of mild Cheddar, originally English. Known as an "all-around cheese," to eat raw, cook, let ripen, and use for seasoning.

Dalmatian
Austria

Hard ewe's-milker.

Dambo
Denmark

Semihard and nutty.

Damen, or Glory of the Mountains (Gloires des Montagnes)
Hungary

Soft, uncured, mild ladies' cheese, as its name asserts. Popular Alpine snack in Viennese cafés with coffee gossip in the afternoon.

Danish Blue
Denmark

Semihard, rich, blue-veined, piquant, delicate, excellent imitation of Roquefort. Sometimes called "Danish Roquefort," and because it is exported around the world it is Denmark's best-known cheese. Although it sells for 20% to 30% less than the international triumvirate of Blues, Roquefort, Stilton and Gorgonzola, it rivals them and definitely leads lesser Blues.

Danish Export
Denmark

Skim milk and buttermilk. Round and flat, mild and mellow. A fine cheese, as many Danish exports are.

Dansk Schweizerost
Denmark

Danish Swiss cheese, imitation Emmentaler, but with small holes. Nutty, sweet dessert or "picnic cheese," as Swiss is often called.

Danzig
Poland

A pleasant cheese to accompany a glass of the great liqueur, Goldwasser, Eau de Vie de Danzig, from the same celebrated city.

Darling
U.S.A.

One of the finest Vermont Cheddars, handled for years by one of America's finest fancy food suppliers, S.S. Pierce of Boston.

Dauphin
Flanders, France

Season, November to May.

d'Aurigny, Fromage see Alderney.

Daventry
England

A Stilton type, white, small, round, flat and very rich, with "blue" veins of a darker green.

Decize
Nivernaise, France

In season all year. Soft, creamy, mellow, resembles Brie.

de Foin, Fromage see Hay.

de Fontine
Spain

Crumbly, sharp, nutty.

de Gascony, Fromage see Castillon.

de Gérardmer see Récollet.

Delft
Holland

About the same as Leyden. (See.)

Délicieux

The brand name of a truly delicious Brie.

Delikat
U.S.A.

A mellow breakfast spread, on the style of the German Frühstück original. (See.)

de Lile, Boule

French name for Belgian Oude Kaas.

Demi-Étuve

Half-size Étuve. (See.)

Demi Petit Suisse

The name for an extra small Petit Suisse to distinguish it from the Gros.

Demi-Sel
Normandy, France

Soft, whole, creamy, lightly salted, resembles Gournay but slightly saltier; also like U.S. cream cheese, but softer and creamier.

Demi-Sel, Croissant see Croissant Demi-Sel.

Derby, or Derbyshire
England

Hard; shape like Austrian Nagelkassa and the size of Cheshire though sometimes smaller. Dry, large, flat, round, flaky, sharp and tangy. A factory cheese said to be identical with Double Gloucester and similar to Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Leicester. The experts pronounce it "a somewhat inferior Cheshire, but deficient in its quality and the flavor of Cheddar." So it's unlikely to win in any cheese derby in spite of its name.

Devonshire cream and cheese
England

Devonshire cream is world famous for its thickness and richness. Superb with wild strawberries; almost a cream cheese by itself. Devonshire cream is made into a luscious cheese ripened on straw, which gives it a special flavor, such as that of French Foin or Hay cheese.

Dolce Verde
Italy

This creamy blue-vein variety is named Sweet Green, because cheesemongers are color-blind when it comes to the blue-greens and the green-blues.

Domaci Beli Sir
Yugoslavia

"Sir" is not a title but the word for cheese. This is a typical ewe's-milker cured in a fresh sheep skin.

Domestic Gruyère
U.S.A.

An imitation of a cheese impossible to imitate.

Domestic Swiss
U.S.A

Same as domestic Gruyère, maybe more so, since it is made in ponderous 150-to 200-pound wheels, chiefly in Wisconsin and Ohio. The trouble is there is no Alpine pasturage and Emmentaler Valley in our country.

Domiati
Egypt

Whole or partly skimmed cow's or buffalo's milk. Soft; white; no openings; mild and salty when fresh and cleanly acid when cured. It's called "a pickled cheese" and is very popular in the Near East.

Dorset, Double Dorset, Blue Dorset, or Blue Vinny
England

Blue mold type from Dorsetshire; crumbly, sharp; made in flat forms. "Its manufacture has been traced back 150 years in the family of F.E. Dare, who says that in all probability it was made longer ago than that." (See Blue Vinny.)

Dotter
Nürnberg, Germany

An entirely original cheese perfected by G. Leuchs in Nürnberg. He enriched skim milk with yolk of eggs and made the cheese in the usual way. When well ripened it is splendid.

Doubles

The English name cheese made of whole milk "double," such as Double Cottenham, Double Dorset, Double Gloucester. "Singles" are cheeses from which some of the cream has been removed.

Double-cream
England

Similar to Wensleydale.

Double-crème
France

There are several of this name, made in the summer when milk is richest in cream. The full name is Fromage à la Double-crème, and Pommel is one well known. They are made throughout France in season and are much in demand.

Dresdener Bierkäse
Germany

A celebrated hand cheese made in Dresden. The typical soft, skim milker, strong with caraway and drunk dissolved in beer, as well as merely eaten.

Drinking cheeses

Not only Dresdener, but dozens of regional hand cheeses in Germanic countries are melted in steins of beer or glasses of wine to make distinctive cheesed drinks for strong stomachs and noses. This peps up the drinks in somewhat the same way as ale and beer are laced with pepper sauce in some parts.

Dry
Germany

From the drinking cheese just above to dry cheese is quite a leap. "This cheese, known as Sperrkäse and Trockenkäse, is made in the small dairies of the eastern part of the Bavarian Alps and in the Tyrol. It is an extremely simple product, made for home consumption and only in the winter season, when the milk cannot be profitably used for other purposes. As soon as the milk is skimmed it is put into a large kettle which can be swung over a fire, where it is kept warm until it is thoroughly thickened from souring. It is then broken up and cooked quite firm. A small quantity of salt and sometimes some caraway seed are added, and the curd is put into forms of various sizes. It is then placed in a drying room, where it becomes very hard, when it is ready for eating." (From U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 608.)

Dubreala see Brina.

Duel
Austria

Soft; skim milk; hand type; two by two by one-inch cube.

Dunlop
Scotland

One of the national cheeses of Scotland, but now far behind Cheddar, which it resembles, although it is closer in texture and moister. Semihard; white; sharp; buttery; tangy and rich in flavor. It is one of the "toasting cheeses" resembling Lancashire, too, in form and weight. Made in Ayr, Lanark and Renfrew and sold in the markets of Kilmarnock, Kirkcudbright and Wigtown.

Durak
Turkey

Mixed with butter; mellow and smoky. Costs three dollars a pound.

Duralag, or Bgug-Panir
Armenia

Sheep; semisoft to brittle hard; square; sharp but mellow and tangy with herbs. Sometimes salty from lying in a brine bath from two days to two months.

Durmar, Rarush see Rarush.

Dutch
Holland

Cream cheese of skim milk, very perishable spread.

Dutch cheese

American vernacular for cottage or pot cheese.

Dutch Cream Cheese
England

Made in England although called Dutch. Contains eggs, and is therefore richer than Dutch cream cheese in Holland itself. In America we call the original Holland-kind Dutch, cottage, pot, and farmer.

Dutch Mill
U.S.A.

A specialty of Oakland, California.

Dutch Red Balls

English name for Edam.

E

Echourgnac, Trappe d'
Périgord, France

Trappist monastery Port-Salut made in Limousin.

Edam see Chapter 3.

Egg
Finland

Semihard. One of the few cheeses made by adding eggs to the curds. Others are Dutch Cream Cheese of England; German Dotter; French Fromage Cuit (cooked cheese), and Westphalian. Authorities agree that these should be labeled "egg cheese" so the buyers won't be fooled by their richness. The Finns age their eggs even as the Chinese ripen their hundred-year-old eggs, by burying them in grain, as all Scandinavians do, and the Scotch as well, in the oat bin. But none of them is left a century to ripen, as eggs are said to be in China.

Elbinger, or Elbing
West Prussia

Hard; crumbly; sharp. Made of whole milk except in winter when it is skimmed. Also known as Werderkäse and Niederungskäse.

Ekiwani
Caucasus

Hard; sheep; white; sharp; salty with some of the brine it's bathed in.

Elisavetpolen, or Eriwani
Caucasus

Hard; sheep; sweetish-sharp and slightly salty when fresh from the brine bath. Also called Kasach (Cossack), Tali, Kurini and Karab in different locales.

Elmo Table
Italy

Soft, mellow, tasty.

Emiliano
Italy

Hard; flavor varies from mild to sharp. Parmesan type.

Emmentaler
Switzerland

There are so many, many types of this celebrated Swiss all around the world that we're not surprised to find Lapland reindeer milk cheese listed as similar to Emmentaler of the hardest variety. (See Chapter 3, also Vacherin Fondu.)

"En enveloppe"

French phrase of packaged cheese, "in the envelope." Similar to English packet and our process. Raw natural cheese the French refer to frankly as nu, "in the nude."

Engadine
Graubünden, Switzerland

Semihard; mild; tangy-sweet.

English Dairy
England and U.S.A.

Extra-hard, crumbly and sharp. Resembles Cheddar and has long been imitated in the States, chiefly as a cooking cheese.

Entrechaux, le Cachat d' see Cachat.

Epoisses, Fromage d'
Côte d'Or, Upper Burgundy, France

Soft, small cylinder with flattened end, about five inches across. The season is from November to July. Equally proud of their wine and cheese, the Burgundians marry white wine or marc to d'Epoisses in making confits with that name.

Erbo
Italy

Similar to Gorgonzola. The Galvani cheesemakers of Italy who put out both Bel Paese and Taleggio also export Erbo to our shores.

Erce
Languedoc, France

Soft, smooth and sharp. A winter cheese in season only from November to May.

Eriwani see Elisavetpolen.

Ervy
Champagne, France

Soft; yellow rind; smooth; tangy; piquant; seven by two-and-a-half inches, weight four pounds. Resembles Camembert. A washed cheese, also known as Fromage de Troyes. In season November to May.

Essex
U.S.A.

Imitation of an extinct or at least dormant English type.

Estrella see Serra da Estrella.

Étuve and Demi-Étuve
Holland

Semihard; smooth; mellow. In full size and demi (half) size. In season all year.

Evarglice
Yugoslavia

Sharp, nutty flavor.

Excelsior
Normandy, France

Season all year.

F

Factory Cheddar
U.S.A.

Very Old Factory Cheddar is the trade name for well-aged sharp Cheddar. New Factory is just that—mild, young and tractable—too tractable, in fact.

Farm
France

Known as Ferme; Maigre (thin); Fromage à la Pie (nothing to do with apple pie); and Mou (weak). About the same as our cottage cheese.

Farmer
U.S.A.

This is curd only and is nowadays mixed with pepper, lachs, nuts, fruits, almost anything. A very good base for your own fancy spread, or season a slab to fancy and bake it like a hoe cake, but in the oven.

Farmhouse see Herrgårdsost.

Farm Vale
England

Cream cheese of Somerset wrapped in tin foil and boxed in wedges, eight to a box.

Fat cheese see Frontage Gras and Maile Pener.

Fenouil see Tome de Savoie.

Ferme see Farm.

Feta see Chapter 3.

Feuille de Dreux
Béarn, France

November to May.

"Filled cheese"
England

Before our processed and food cheese era some scoundrels in the cheese business over there added animal fats and margarine to skimmed milk to make it pass as whole milk in making cheese. Such adulteration killed the flavor and quality, and no doubt some of the customers. Luckily in America we put down this vicious counterfeiting with pure food laws. But such foreign fats are still stuffed into the skimmed milk of many foreign cheeses. To take the place of the natural butterfat the phony fats are whipped in violently and extra rennet is added to speed up coagulation.

Fin de Siècle
Normandy, France

Although this is an "all year" cheese its name dates it back to the years at the close of the nineteenth century.

Fiore di Alpe
Italy

Hard; sharp; tangy. Romantically named "Flowers of the Alps."

Fiore Sardo
Italy

Ewe's milk. Hard. Table cheese when immature; a condiment when fully cured.

Flandre, Tuile de
France

A kind of Marolles.

Fleur de Deauville
France

A type of Brie, in season December to May.

Fleur des Alpes see Bel Paese and Millefiori.

Floedeost
Norway

Like Gjedeost, but not so rich because it's made of cow's milk.

Fløtost
Norway

Although the name translates Cream Cheese it is made of boiled whey. Similar to Mysost, but fatter.

Flower
England

Soft and fragrant with petals of roses, violets, marigolds and such, delicately mixed in. Since the English are so fond of oriental teas scented with jasmine and other flowers, perhaps they imported the idea of mixing petals with their cheese, since there is no oriental cheese for them to import except bean curd.

Fodder cheese

A term for cheese made from fodder in seasons when there is no grass. Good fresh grass is the essence of all fine cheese, so silo or barn-fed cows can't give the kind of milk it takes.

Foggiano
Apulia, Italy

A member of the big Pecorino family because it's made of sheep's milk.

Foin, Fromage de see Hay.

Fondu, Vacherin see Vacherin Fondu.

Fontainebleau
France

Named after its own royal commune. Soft; fresh cream; smooth; mellow; summer variety.

Fontina Val d'Acosta, Italy

Soft; goat; creamy; with a nutty flavor and delightful aroma.

Fontine, de
Franche-Comté, France

A favorite all-year product.

Fontinelli
Italy

Semidry; flaky; nutty; sharp.

Fontini
Parma, Italy

Hard; goat; similar to Swiss, but harder and sharper. From the same region as Parmesan.

Food cheese
U.S.A.

An unattractive type of processed mixes, presumably with some cheese content to flavor it.

Forez, also called d'Ambert
France

The process of making this is said to be very crude, and the ripening unusual. The cheeses are cylindrical, ten inches in diameter and six inches high. They are ripened by placing them on the floor of the cellar, covering with dirt, and allowing water to trickle over them. Many are spoiled by the unusual growths of mold and bacteria. The flavor of the best of these is said to resemble Roquefort. (From Bulletin No. 608 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to which we are indebted for descriptions of hundreds of varieties in this alphabet.)

Formagelle
Northwest Italy

Soft, ripened specialty put up in half-pound packages.

Formaggi di Pasta Filata
Italy

A group of Italian cheeses made by curdling milk with rennet, warming and fermenting the curd, heating it until it is plastic, drawing it into ropes and then kneading and shaping while hot. Provolone, Caciocavallo and Mozzarella are in this group.

Formaggini, and Formaggini di Lecco
Italy

Several small cheeses answer to this name, of which Lecco is typical. A Lombardy dessert cheese measuring 1¼ by two inches, weighing two ounces. It is eaten from the time it is fresh and sweet until it ripens to piquance. Sometimes made of cow and goat milk mixed, with the addition of oil and vinegar, as well as salt, pepper, sugar and cinnamon.

Formaggio d'Oro
Northwest Italy

Hard, sharp, mountain-made.

Formaggio Duro (Dry) and Formaggio Tenero see Nostrale.

Fort see Fromage Fort.

Fourme, Cantal, and la Tome
Auvergne, France

This is a big family in the rich cheese province of Auvergne, where many mountain varieties are baptized after their districts, such as Aubrac, Aurilla, Grand Murol, Rôche and Salers. (See Fourme d'Ambert and Cantal.)

Fourme de Montebrison
Auvergne, France

This belongs to the Fourme clan and is in season from November to May.

Fourme de Salers see Cantal, which it resembles so closely it is sometimes sold under that name.

Fresa, or Pannedas
Sardinia, Italy

A soft, mild and sweet cooked cheese.

Fribourg
Italy and Switzerland

Hard; cooked-curd, Swiss type very similar to Spalen. (See)

Frissche Kaas, Fresh cheese
Holland

Dutch generic name for any soft, fresh spring cheese, although some is made in winter, beginning in November.

Friesian see West Friesian.

Fromage à la Creme
France

I. Sour milk drained and mixed with cream. Eaten with sugar. That of
Gien is a noted produce, and so is d'Isigny.
II. Franche-Comté—fresh sheep milk melted with fresh thick cream,
whipped egg whites and sugar.
III. Morvan—homemade cottage cheese. When milk has soured solid it is
hung in cheesecloth in a cool place to drain, then mixed with a
little fresh milk and served with cream.
IV. When Morvan or other type is put into a heart-shaped wicker basket
for a mold, and marketed in that, it becomes Coeur à la Crème,
heart of cream, to be eaten with sugar.

Fromage à la Pie see Fromage Blanc just below, and Farm

Fromage Bavarois à la Vanille
France

Dessert cheese sweetened and flavored with vanilla and named after Bavaria where it probably originated.

Fromage Blanc
France

Soft cream or cottage cheese, called à la Pie, too, suggesting pie à la mode; also Farm from the place it's made. Usually eaten with salt and pepper, in summer only. It is the ascetic version of Fromage à la Crème, usually eaten with salt and pepper and without cream or sugar, except in the Province of Bresse where it is served with cream and called Fromage Blanc à la Crème.

Every milky province has its own Blanc. In Champagne it's made of fresh ewe milk. In Upper Brittany it is named after Nantes and also called Fromage de Curé. Other districts devoted to it are Alsace-Lorraine, Auvergne, Languedoc, and Ile-de-France.

Fromage Bleu see Bleu d'Auvergne.

Fromage Cuit (cooked cheese)
Thionville, Lorraine, France

Although a specialty of Lorraine, this cooked cheese is produced in many places. First it is made with fresh whole cow milk, then pressed and potted. After maturing a while it is de-potted, mixed with milk and egg yolk, re-cooked and re-potted.

Fromage d'Aurigny see Alderney.

Fromage de Bayonne
Bayonne, France

Made with ewe's milk.

Fromage de Bôite
Doubs, France

Soft, mountain-made, in the fall only. Resembles Pont l'Evêque.

Fromage de Bourgogne

see Burgundy.

Fromage de Chèvre de Chateauroux
Berry, France

A seasonal goat cheese.

Fromage de Curé see Nantais.

Fromage de Fontenay-le Comté
Poitou, France

Half goat and half cow milk.

Fromage de Gascony see Castillon.

Fromage de Pau see La Foncée.

Fromage de St. Rémy see Chevrets.

Fromage de Serac
Savoy, France

Half and half, cow and goat, from Serac des Allues.

Fromage de Troyes
France

Two cheeses have this name. (See Barberry and Ervy.)

Fromage de Vache

Another name for Autun.

Fromage de Monsieur Fromage
Normandy, France

This Cheese of Mr. Cheese is as exceptional as its name. Its season runs from November to June. It comes wrapped in a green leaf, maybe from a grape vine, suggesting what to drink with it. It is semidry, mildly snappy with a piquant pungence all its own. The playful name suggests the celebrated dish, Poulette de Madame Poulet, Chick of Mrs. Chicken.

Fromage Fort
France

Several cooked cheeses are named Fort (strong) chiefly in the department of Aisne. Well-drained curd is melted, poured into a cloth and pressed, then buried in dry ashes to remove any whey left. After being fermented eight to ten days it is grated, mixed with butter, salt, pepper, wine, juniper berries, butter and other things, before fermenting some more.

Similar extra-strong cheeses are the one in Lorraine called Fondue and Fromagère of eastern France, classed as the strongest cheeses in all France.

Fort No. I: That of Flanders, potted with juniper berries, as the gin of this section is flavored, plus pepper, salt and white wine.

Fort No. II: That from Franche-Comté Small dry goat cheeses pounded and potted with thyme, tarragon, leeks, pepper and brandy. (See Hazebrook.)

Fort No. III: From Provence, also called Cachat d'Entrechaux. In production from May to November. Semihard, sheep milk, mixed with brandy, white wine, strong herbs and seasonings and well marinated.

Fromage Gras (fat cheese)
Savoy, France

Soft, round, fat ball called tête de mort, "death's head." Winter Brie is also called Gras but there is no relation. This macabre name incited Victor Meusy to these lines:

Fromage Mou

Any soft cheese.

Fromage Piquant see Remoudon.

Fromagère see Canquillote.

Fromages de Chèvre
Orléanais, France

Small, dried goat-milkers.

Frühstück

Also known as breakfast and lunch cheese. Small rounds two-and-a-half to three inches in diameter. Limburger type. Cheeses on which many Germans and Americans break their fast.

Ftinoporino
Macedonia, Greece

Sheep's-milker similar to Brinza.

G

Gaiskäsli
Germany and Switzerland

A general name for goat's milk cheese. Usually a small cylinder three inches in diameter and an inch-and-a-half thick, weighing up to a half pound. In making, the curds are set on a straw mat in molds, for the whey to run away. They are salted and turned after two days to salt the other side. They ripen in three weeks with a very pleasing flavor.

Gammelost
Norway

Hard, golden-brown, sour-milker. After being pressed it is turned daily for fourteen days and then packed in a chest with wet straw. So far as we are concerned it can stay there. The color all the way through is tobacco-brown and the taste, too. It has been compared to medicine, chewing tobacco, petrified Limburger, and worse. In his Encyclopedia of Food Artemas Ward says that in Gammelost the ferments absorb so much of the curd that "in consequence, instead of eating cheese flavored by fungi, one is practically eating fungi flavored with cheese."

Garda
Italy

Soft, creamy, fermented. A truly fine product made in the resort town on Gardasee where d'Annunzio retired. It is one of those luscious little ones exported in tin foil to America, and edible, including the moldy crust that could hardly be called a rind.

Garden
U.S.A.

Cream cheese with some greens or vegetables mixed in.

Garlic
U.S.A.

A processed Cheddar type flavored with garlic.

Garlic-onion Link
U.S.A.

A strong processed Cheddar put up to look like links of sausage, nobody knows why.

Gascony, Fromage de see Castillon.

Gautrias
Mayenne, France

Soft, cylinder weighing about five pounds and resembling Port-Salut.

Gavot
Hautes-Alpes, France

A good Alpine cheese whether made of sheep, goat or cow milk.

Geheimrath
Netherlands

A factory cheese turned out in small quantities. The color is deep yellow and it resembles a Baby Gouda in every way, down to the weight

Gérardmer, de see Récollet

German-American adopted types

Géromé, la
Vosges, France

Semihard: cylinders up to eleven pounds; brick-red rind; like Münster, but larger. Strong, fragrant and flavorsome, sometimes with aniseed. It stands high at home, where it is in season from October to April.

Gervais
Ile-de-France, France

Cream cheese like Neufchâtel, long made by Maison Gervais, near Paris. Sold in tiny tin-foil squares not much larger than old-time yeast. Like Petit Suisse, it makes a perfect luncheon dessert with honey.

Gesundheitkäse, Holsteiner see Holstein Health.

Getmesost
Sweden

Soft; goat; whey; sweet.

Gex
Pays de Gex, France

Semihard; skim milk; blue-veined. A "little" Roquefort in season from November to May.

Gex Marbré
France

A very special type marbled with rich milks of cow, goat and sheep, mixed. A full-flavored ambassador of the big international Blues family, that are green in spite of their name.

Gien see Fromage à la Crème.

Gislev
Scandinavia

Hard; mild, made from skimmed cow's milk.

Gjetost
Norway

A traditional chocolate-colored companion piece to Gammelost, but made with goat's milk.

Glavis
Switzerland

The brand name of a cone of Sapsago. (See.)

Glattkäse, or Gelbkäse
Germany

Smooth cheese or yellow cheese. A classification of sour-milkers that includes Olmützer Quargel.

Cloire des Montagnes see Damen.

3/Dec/2004 15:38
Gloucestershire, England

There are two types:
I. Double, the better of the two Gloucesters, is eaten only after six
months of ripening. "It has a pronounced, but mellow, delicacy of
flavor...the tiniest morsel being pregnant with savour. To measure
its refinement, it can undergo the same comparison as that we apply
to vintage wines. Begin with a small piece of Red Cheshire. If you
then pass to a morsel of Double Gloucester, you will find that the
praises accorded to the latter have been no whit exaggerated."
A Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy, by André L. Simon.
II. Single. By way of comparison, the spring and summer Single Gloucester
ripens in two months and is not as big as its "large grindstone"
brother. And neither is it "glorified Cheshire." It is mild and
"as different in qualify of flavour as a young and crisp wine is
from an old vintage."

Glumse
West Prussia, Germany

A common, undistinguished cottage cheese.

Glux
Nivernais, France

Season, all year.

Goat
France

A frank and fair name for a semihard, brittle mouthful of flavor. Every country has its goat specialties. In Norway the milk is boiled dry, then fresh milk or cream added. In Czechoslovakia the peasants smoke the cheese up the kitchen chimney. No matter how you slice it, goat cheese is always notable or noble.

Gold-N-Rich
U.S.A.

Golden in color and rich in taste. Bland, as American taste demands. Like Bel Paese but not so full-flavored and a bit sweet. A good and deservedly popular cheese none the less, easily recognized by its red rind.

Gomost
Norway

Usually made from cow's milk, but sometimes from goat's. Milk is curdled with rennet and condensed by heating until it has a butter-like consistency. (See Mysost.)

Gorgonzola
Italy

Besides the standard type exported to us (See Chapter 3.) there is White Gorgonzola, little known outside Italy where it is enjoyed by local caseophiles, who like it put up in crocks with brandy, too.

Gouda see Chapter 3.

Gouda, Kosher
Holland

The same semihard good Gouda, but made with kosher rennet. It is a bit more mellow than most and, like all kosher products, is stamped by the Jewish authorities who prepare it.

Goya
Corrientes, Argentine

Hard, dry, Italian type for grating. Like all fine Argentine cheeses the milk of pedigreed herds fed on prime pampas grass distinguishes Goya from lesser Parmesan types, even back in Italy.

It is interesting that the nitrate in Chilean soil makes their wines the best in America, and the richness of Argentine milk does the same for their cheeses, most of which are Italian imitations and some of which excel the originals.

Gournay
Seine, France

Soft, similar to Demi-sel, comes in round and flat forms about ¼ pound in weight. Those shaped like Bondons resemble corks about ¾ of an inch thick and four inches long.

Grana
Italy

Another name for Parmesan. From "grains", the size of big shot, that the curd is cut into.

Grana Lombardo
Lombardy

The same hard type for grating, named after its origin in Lombardy.

Grana Reggiano
Reggio, Italy

A brand of Parmesan type made near Reggio and widely imitated, not only in Lombardy and Mantua, but also in the Argentine where it goes by a pet name of its own—Regianito.

Grande Bornand, la
Switzerland

A luscious half-dried sheep's milker.

Granular curd see Stirred curd.

Gras, or Velvet Kaas
Holland

Named from its butterfat content and called "Moors Head", Tête de Maure, in France, from its shape and size. The same is true of Fromage de Gras in France, called Tête de Mort, "Death's Head". Gras is also the popular name for Brie that's made in the autumn in France and sold from November to May. (See Brie.)

Gratairon
France

Goat milk named, as so many are, from the place it is made.

Graubünden
Switzerland

A luscious half-dried sheep's milker.

Green Bay
U.S.A.

Medium-sharp, splendid White Cheddar from Green Bay, Wisconsin, the Limburger county.

Grey
Germany and Austrian Tyrol

Semisoft; sour skim milk with salty flavor from curing in brine bath. Named from the gray color that pervades the entire cheese when ripe. It has a very pleasant taste.

Gruyère see Chapter 3.

Güssing, or Land-l-kas
Austria

Similar to Brick. Skim milk. Weight between four and eight pounds.

H

Habas see Caille.

Hablé Crème Chantilly
Ösmo, Sweden

Soft ripened dessert cheese made from pasteurized cream by the old Walla Creamery. Put up in five-ounce wedge-shaped boxes for export and sold for a high price, well over two dollars a pound, in fancy big city groceries. Truly an aristocrat of cheeses to compare with the finest French Brie or Camembert. See Chapter 3.

Hand see Chapter 3.

Hard
Puerto Rico

Dry; tangy.

Harzkäse, Harz
Harz Mountains, Germany

Tiny hand cheese. Probably the world's smallest soft cheese, varying from 2½ inches by 1½ down to ¼ by 1½. Packed in little boxes, a dozen together, rubbing rinds, as close as sardines. And like Harz canaries, they thrive on seeds, chiefly caraway.

Harzé
Belgium

Port-Salut type from the Trappist monastery at Harzé.

Hasandach
Turkey

Bland; sweet.

Hauskäse.
Germany

Limburger type. Disk-shaped.

Haute Marne
France

Soft; square.

Hay, or Fromage au Foin
Seine, France

A skim-milker resembling "a poor grade of Livarot." Nothing to write home about, except that it is ripened on new-mown hay.

Hazebrook

There are two kinds:

I. Flemish; a Fromage Fort type with white wine, juniper, salt and
pepper. Excessively strong for bland American tasters.
II. Franche-Comté, France; small dry goat's milker, pounded, potted and
marinated in a mixture of thyme, tarragon, leeks, pepper and brandy.

Head

Four cheeses are called Head:

The French Death's Head.
Swiss Monk's Head.
Dutch Cat's Head.
Moor's Head.

There's headcheese besides but that's made of a pig's head and is only a cheese by discourtesy.

Health see Holstein.

Herbesthal
Germany

Named from a valley full of rich herbes for grazing.

Herkimer
U.S.A.

Cheddar type; nearly white. See Chapter 4.

Herrgårdsost, Farm House or Manor House
West Gothland and Jamtland, Sweden

Hard Emmentaler type in two qualities: full cream and half cream. Weighs 25 to 40 pounds. It is the most popular cheese in all Sweden and the best is from West Gothland and Jutland.

Herrgårdstyp see Hushållsost.

Hervé
Belgium

Soft; made in cubes and peppered with herbes such as tarragon, parsley and chives. It flourishes from November to May and comes in three qualities: extra cream, cream, and part skim milk.

Hickory Smoked
U.S.A.

Good smoke is often wasted on bad cheese.

Hohenburg see Box No. II.

Hohenheim
Germany

Soft; part skimmed milk; half-pound cylinders. (See Box No. I.)

Hoi Poi
China

Soybean cheese, developed by vegetable rennet. Exported in jars.

Hoja see Queso de.

Hollander
North Germany

Imitation Dutch Goudas and Edams, chiefly from Neukirchen in Holstein.

Holstein Dairy see Leather.

Holsteiner, or Old Holsteiner
Germany

Eaten best when old, with butter, or in the North, with dripping.

Holstein Health, or Holsteiner Gesundheitkäse
Germany

Sour-milk curd pressed hard and then cooked in a tin kettle with a little cream and salt. When mixed and melted it is poured into half-pound molds and cooled.

Holstein Skim Milk or Holstein Magerkäse
Germany

Skim-milker colored with saffron. Its name, "thin cheese," tells all.

Hop, Hopfen
Germany

Small, one inch by 2½ inches, packed in hops to ripen. An ideal beer cheese, loaded with lupulin.

Hopi
U.S.A.

Hard; goat; brittle; sharp; supposed to have been made first by the Hopi Indians out west where it's still at home.

Horner's
England

An old cream cheese brand in Redditch where Worcestershire sauce originated.

Horse Cheese

Not made of mare's milk, but the nickname for Caciocavallo because of the horse's head used to trademark the first edition of it.

Hum
Holland

Brand name of one of those mild little red Baby Goudas that make you say "Ho-hum."

Hushållsost, Household Cheese
Sweden

Popular in three types: Popular in three types:
Herrgårdstyp—Farmhouse
Västgötatyp—Westgotland
Sveciatyp—Swedish

Hvid Gjetost
Norway

A strong variety of Gjetost, little known and less liked outside of Scandinavia.

I

Icelandic

In Letters from Iceland, W.H. Auden says: "The ordinary cheese is like a strong Dutch and good. There is also a brown sweet cheese, like the Norwegian." Doubtless the latter is Gjetost.

Ihlefield
Mecklenburg, Germany

A hand cheese.

Ilha, Queijo de
Azores

Semihard "Cheese of the Isle," largely exported to mother Portugal, measuring about a foot across and four inches high. The one word, Ilha, Isle, covers the several Azorian Islands whose names, such as Pico, Peak, and Terceiro, Third, are sometimes added to their cheeses.

Impérial, Ancien see Ancien.

Imperial Club
Canada

Potted Cheddar; snappy; perhaps named after the famous French Ancien Impérial.

Incanestrato
Sicily, Italy

Very sharp; white; cooked; spiced; formed into large round "heads" from fifteen to twenty pounds. See Majocchino, a kind made with the three milks, goat, sheep and cow, and enriched with olive oil besides.

Irish Cheeses

Irish Cheddar and Irish Stilton are fairly ordinary imitations named after their native places of manufacture: Ardagh, Galtee, Whitehorn, Three Counties, etc.

Isigny
France

Full name Fromage à la Crème d'Isigny. (See.) Cream cheese. The American cheese of this name never amounted to much. It was an attempt to imitate Camembert in the Gay Nineties, but it turned out to be closer to Limburger. (See Chapter 2.)

In France there is also Crème d'Isigny, thick fresh cream that's as famous as England's Devonshire and comes as close to being cheese as any cream can.

Island of Orléans
Canada

This soft, full-flavored cheese was doubtless brought from France by early emigrés, for it has been made since 1869 on the Orléans Island in the St. Lawrence River near Quebec. It is known by its French name, Le Fromage Raffiné de l'Ile d'Orléans, and lives up to the name "refined."

J

Jack see Monterey.

Jochberg
Tyrol, Germany

Cow and goat milk mixed in a fine Tyrolean product, as all mountain cheese are. Twenty inches in diameter and four inches high, it weighs in at forty-five pounds with the rind on.

Jonchée
Santonge, France

A superior Caillebotte, flavored with rum, orange-flower water or, uniquely, black coffee.

Josephine
Silesia, Germany

Soft and ladylike as its name suggests. Put up in small cylindrical packages.

Journiac see Chapter 3.

Julost
Sweden.

Semihard; tangy.

Jura Bleu, or Septmoncel
France

Hard: blue-veined; sharp; tangy.

K

Kaas, Oude
Belgium

Flemish name for the French Boule de Lille.

Kackavalj
Yugoslavia

Same as Italian Caciocavallo.

Kaiser-käse
Germany

This was an imperial cheese in the days of the kaisers and is still made under that once awesome name. Now it's just a jolly old mellow, yellow container of tang.

Kajmar, or Serbian Butter
Serbia and Turkey

Cream cheese, soft and bland when young but ages to a tang between that of any goat's-milker and Roquefort.

Kamembert
Yugoslavia

Imitation Camembert.

Karaghi La-La
Turkey

Nutty and tangy.

Kareish
Egypt

A pickled cheese, similar to Domiati.

Karut
India

Semihard; mellow; for grating and seasoning.

Karvi
Norway

Soft; caraway-seeded; comes in smallish packages.

Kash
Rumania

Soft, white, somewhat stringy cheese named cheese.

Kashcavallo, Caskcaval
Greece

A good imitation of Italian Caciocavallo.

Kasher, or Caher, Penner
Turkey

Hard; white; sharp.

Kash Kwan
Bulgaria and the Balkans

An all-purpose goat's milk, Parmesan type, eaten sliced when young, grated when old. An attempt to imitate it in Chicago failed. It is sold in Near East quarters in New York, Washington and all big American cities.

Kaskaval
Rumania

Identical with Italian Caciocavallo, widely imitated, and well, in Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Transylvania and neighboring lands. As popular as Cheddar in England, Canada and U.S.A.

Kasseri
Greece

Hard; ewe's milk, usually.

Katschkawalj
Serbia

Just another version of the international Caciocavallo.

Katzenkopf, Cat's Head
Holland

Another name for Edam. (See Chapter 3.)

Kaukauna Club
U.S.A.

Widely advertised processed cheese food.

Kauna
Lithuania

A hearty cheese that's in season all the year around.

Kefalotir, Kefalotyi
Yugoslavia, Greece and Syria

Both of these hard, grating cheeses are made from either goat's or ewe's milk and named after their shape, resembling a Greek hat, or Kefalo.

Keg-ripened
see Brand.

King Christian IX
Denmark

Sharp with caraway. Popular with everybody.

Kingdom Farm
U.S.A, near Ithaca, N.Y. The Rutherfordites or Jehovah's Witnesses make Brick, Limburger and Münster that are said to be most delectable by those mortals lucky enough to get into the Kingdom Farm. Unfortunately their cheese is not available elsewhere.

Kirgischerkäse see Krutt.

Kjarsgaard
Denmark

Hard; skim; sharp; tangy.

Klatschkäse, Gossip Cheese
Germany

A rich "ladies' cheese" corresponding to Damen; both designed to promote the flow of gossip in afternoon Kaffee-klatsches in the Konditories.

Kloster, Kloster Käse
Bavaria

Soft; ripe; finger-shaped, one by one by four inches. In Munich this was, and perhaps still is, carried by brew masters on their tasting tours "to bring out the excellence of a freshly broached tun." Named from being made by monks in early cloisters, down to this day.

Kochenkäse
Luxembourg

Cooked white dessert cheese. Since it is salt-free it is recommended for diets.

Koch Käse
Germany

This translates "cooked cheese."

Kochtounkäse
Belgium

Semisoft, cooked and smoked. Bland flavor.

Kolos-monostor
Rumania

Sheep; rectangular four-pounder, 8½ by five by three inches. One of those college-educated cheeses turned out by the students and professors at the Agricultural School of Transylvania.

Kolosvarer
Rumania

A Trappist Port-Salut imitation made with water-buffalo milk, as are so many of the world's fine cheeses.

Komijnekaas, Komynekass
North Holland

Spiked with caraway seeds and named after them.

Konigskäse
Germany

A regal name for a German imitation of Bel Paese.

Kopanisti
Greece

Blue-mold cheese with sharp, peppery flavor.

Koppen, Cup, or Bauden
Germany

Semihard; goat; made in a cup-shaped mold that gives both its shape and name. Small, three to four ounces; sharp; pungent; somewhat smoky. Imitated in U.S.A. in half-pound packages.

Korestin
Russia

Semisoft; mellow; cured in brine.

Kosher

This cheese appears in many countries under several names. Similar to Limburger, but eaten fresh. It is stamped genuine by Jewish authorities, for the use of religious persons. (See Gouda, Kosher.)

Krauterkäse
Brazil

Soft-paste herb cheese put up in a tube by German Brazilians near the Argentine border. A rich, full-flavored adaptation of Swiss Krauterkäse even though it is processed.

Kreuterkäse, Herb Cheese
Switzerland

Hard, grating cheese flavored with herbs; like Sapsago or Grunkäse.

Krutt, or Kirgischerkäse
Asian Steppes

A cheese turned out en route by nomadic tribes in the Asiatic Steppes, from sour skim milk of goat, sheep, cow or camel. The salted and pressed curd is made into small balls and dried in the sun.

Kühbacher
Bavaria

Soft, ripe, and chiefly interesting because of its name, Cow Creek, where it is made.

Kuminost
Norway

Semihard; caraway-seeded.

Kumminost
Sweden

This is Bondost with caraway added.

Kummin Ost
Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Imitation of the Scandinavian, with small production in Wisconsin where so many Swedes and Norwegians make their home and their ost.

Kümmel, Leyden, or Leidsche Kaas
Holland

Caraway-seeded and named.

Kümmelkäse
Germany and U.S.A.

Semihard; sharp with caraway. Milwaukee Kümmelkäse has made a name for itself as a nibble most suitable with most drinks, from beer to imported kümmel liqueur.

L

Labneh
Syria

Sour-milk.

La Foncée, or Fromage de Pau
France

Cream cheese.

Lager Käse
U.S.A.

Semidry and mellow. While lager means merely "to store," there is more than a subtle suggestion of lager beer here.

Laguiole, Fromage de, and Guiole
Aveyron, France

An ancient Cantal type said to have flourished since the Roman occupation. Many consider Laguiole superior to Cantal. It is in full season from November to May.

Lamothe-Bougon, La Mothe St. Heray
Poitou

Goat cheese made from May to November.

Lancashire, or Lancaster
North England

White; crumbly; sharp; a good Welsh Rabbit cheese if you can get it. It is more like Cheshire than Cheddar. This most popular variety in the north of England is turned out best at Fylde, near the Irish Sea. It is a curiosity in manufacture, for often the curds used are of different ages, and this is accountable for a loose, friable texture. Deep orange in color.

Land-l-kas, or Güssing
Austria

Skim-milker, similar to U.S. Brick. Square loaves, four to eight pounds.

Langlois Blue
U.S.A.

A Colorado Blue with an excellent reputation, though it can hardly compete with Roquefort.

Langres
Haute-Marne, France

Semihard; fermented whole milk; farm-made; full-flavored, high-smelling Limburger type, similar to Maroilles. Ancient of days, said to have been made since the time of the Merovingian kings. Cylindrical, five by eight inches, they weigh one and a half to two pounds. Consumed mostly at home.

Lapland
Lapland

Reindeer milk. Resembles hard Swiss. Of unusual shape, both round and flat, so a cross-section looks like a dumbbell with angular ends.

Laredo
Mexico

Soft; creamy; mellow, made and named after the North Mexico city.

Larron
France

A kind of Maroilles.

Latticini
Italy

Trade name for a soft, water-buffalo product as creamy as Camembert.

Laumes, les
Burgundy, France

Made from November to July.

Lauterbach
Germany

Breakfast cheese

Leaf see Tschil.

Leather, Leder, or Holstein Dairy
Germany

A skim-milker with five to ten percent buttermilk, all from the great milch cows up near Denmark in Schleswig-Holstein. A technical point in its making is that it's "broken up with a harp or a stirring stick and stirred with a Danish stirrer."

Lebanie
Syria

Dessert cottage cheese often served with yogurt.

Lecco, Formaggini di
Italy

Soft; cow or goat; round dessert variety; representative of a cheese family as big as the human family of most Italians.

Lees see Appenzeller, Festive, No. II.

LeGuéyin
Lorraine, France

Half-dried; small; salted; peppered and sharp. The salt and pepper make it unusual, though not as peppery as Italian Pepato.

Leicester
England

Hard; shallow; flat millstone of Cheddar-like cheese weighing forty pounds. Dark orange and mild to red and strong, according to age. With Wiltshire and Warwickshire it belongs to the Derbyshire type.

An ancient saying is: "Leicester cheese and water cress were just made for each other."

Leidsche Kaas see Leyden.

Leonessa

A kind of Pecorino.

Leroy
U.S.A.

Notable because it's a natural cheese in a mob of modern processed.

Lerroux
France

Goat; in season from February to September and not eaten in fall or winter months.

Lescin
Caucasus

Curious because the sheep's milk that makes it is milked directly into a sack of skin. It is made in the usual way, rennet added, curd broken up, whey drained off, curd put into forms and pressed lightly. But after that it is wrapped in leaves and ropes of grass. After curing two weeks in the leaves, they are discarded, the cheese salted and wrapped up in leaves again for another ripening period.

The use of a skin sack again points the association of cheese and wine in a region where wine is still drunk from skin bags with nozzles, as in many wild and mountainous parts.

Les Petits Bressans
Bresse, France

Small goat cheeses named from food-famous Bresse, of the plump pullets, and often stimulated with brandy before being wrapped in fresh vine leaves, like Les Petits Banons.

Les Petits Fromages see Petits Fromages and Thiviers.

Le Vacherin

Name given to two entirely different varieties:
I. Vacherin à la Main
II. Vacherin Fondu. (See Vacherin.)

Levroux
Berry, France

A goat cheese in season from May to December.

Leyden, Komijne Kaas, Caraway Cheese
Holland

Semihard, tangy with caraway. Similar Delft. There are two kinds of Leyden that might be called Farm Fat and Factory Thin, for those made on the farms contain 30 to 35% fat, against 20% in the factory product.

Liederkranz see Chapter 4.

Limburger see Chapter 3.

Lincoln
England

Cream cheese that keeps two to three weeks. This is in England, where there is much less refrigeration than in the U.S.A., and that's a big break for most natural cheeses.

Lindenhof
Belgium

Semisoft; aromatic; sharp.

Lipta, Liptauer, Liptoiu
Hungary

A classic mixture with condiments, especially the great peppers from which the world's best paprika is made. Liptauer is the regional name for Brinza, as well, and it's made in the same manner, of sheep milk and sometimes cow. Salty and spready, somewhat oily, as most sheep-milkers are. A fairly sharp taste with a suggestion of sour milk. It is sold in various containers and known as "pickled cheese." (See Chapter 3.)

Lipto
Hungary

Soft; sheep; white; mild and milky taste. A close relative of both Liptauer and Brinza.

Little Nippy
U.S.A.

Processed cheese with a cute name, wrapped up both plain and smoky, to "slice and serve for cheese trays, mash or whip for spreading," but no matter how you slice, mash and whip it, it's still processed.

Livarot
Calvados, France

Soft paste, colored with annatto-brown or deep red (also, uncommonly, fresh and white). It has the advantage over Camembert, made in the same region, in that it may be manufactured during the summer months when skim milk is plentiful and cheap. It is formed in cylinders, six by two inches, and ripened several months in the even temperature of caves, to be eaten at its best only in January, February and March. By June and afterward it should be avoided. Similar to Mignot II. Early in the process of making, after ripening ten to twelve days, the cheeses are wrapped in fresh laiche leaves, both to give flavor and help hold in the ammonia and other essentials for making a strong, piquant Livarot.

Livlander
Russia

A popular hand cheese. A most unusual variety because the cheese itself is red, not the rind.

Locatelli
Italy

A brand of Pecorino differing slightly from Bomano Pecorino.

Lodigiano, or Lombardo
Lodi, Italy

Sharp; fragrant; sometimes slightly bitter; yellow. Cylindrical; surface colored dark and oiled. Used for grating. Similar to Parmesan but not as fine in quality.

Longhorn
Wisconsin, U.S.A.

This fine American Cheddar was named from its resemblance to the long horn of a popular milking breed of cattle, or just from the Longhorn breed of cow that furnished the makings.

Lorraine
Lorraine, Germany

Hard; small; delicate; unique because it's seasoned with pistachio nuts besides salt and pepper. Eaten while quite young, in two-ounce portions that bring a very high price.

Lumburger
Belgium

Semisoft and tangy dessert cheese. The opposite of Limburger because it has no odor.

Lunch
Germany and U.S.A.

The same as Breakfast and Frühstück. A Limburger type of eye-opener.

Lüneberg
West Austria

Swiss type; saffron-colored; made in a copper kettle; not as strong as Limburger, or as mild as Emmentaler, yet piquant and aromatic, with a character of its own.

Luxembourg
U.S.A.

Tiny tin-foiled type of Liederkranz. A mild, bland, would-be Camembert.

M

Maconnais
France

Soft; goat's milk; two inches square by one and a half inches thick.

Macqueline
Oise, France

Soft Camembert type, made in the same region, but sold at a cheaper price.

Madridejos
Spain

Named for Madrid where it is made.

Magdeburger-kuhkäse
Germany

"Cow cheese" made in Magdeburg.

Magerkäse see Holstein Skim Milk

Maggenga, Sorte
Italy

A term for Parmesan types made between April and September.

Maguis
Belgium

Also called Fromage Mou. Soft; white; sharp; spread.

Maigre
France

A name for Brie made in summer and inferior to both the winter Gras and spring Migras.

Maile
Crimea

Sheep; cooked; drained; salted; made into forms and put into a brine bath where it stays sometimes a year.

Maile Pener (Fat Cheese)
Crimea

Sheep; crumbly; open texture and pleasing flavor when ripened.

Mainauer
German

Semihard; full cream; round; red outside, yellow within. Weight three pounds.

Mainzer Hand
German

Typical hand cheese, kneaded by hand thoroughly, which makes for quality, pressed into flat cakes by hand, dried for a week, packed in kegs or jars and ripened in the cellar six to eight weeks. As in making bread, the skill in kneading Mainzer makes a worthy craft.

Majocchino
Sicily, Italy

An exceptional variety of the three usual milks mixed together: goat, sheep and cow, flavored with spices and olive oil. A kind of Incanestrato.

Malakoff
France

A form of Neufchâtel about a half inch by two inches, eaten fresh or ripe.

Manicamp
French Flanders

In season from October to July.

Mano, Queso de
Venezuela

A kind of Venezuelan hand cheese, as its Spanish name translates. (See Venezuelan.)

Manor House see Herrgårdsost.

Manteca, Butter
Italy

Cheese and butter combined in a small brick of butter with a covering of Mozzarella. This is for slicing—not for cooking—which is unusual for any Italian cheese.

Manur, or Manuri
Yugoslavia

Sheep or cow's milk heated to boiling, then cooled "until the fingers can be held in it". A mixture of fresh whey and buttermilk is added with the rennet. "The curd is lifted from the whey in a cloth and allowed to drain, when it is kneaded like bread, lightly salted, and dried."

Maqueé
Belgium

Another name for Fromage Mou, Soft Cheese.

Marches
Tuscany, Italy

Ewe's milk; hard.

Margarine
England

An oily cheese made with oleomargarine.

Margherita
Italy

Soft; cream; small.

Marienhofer
Austria

Limburger type. About 4½ inches square and 1½ inches thick; weight about a pound. Wrapped in tin foil.

Märkisch, or Märkisch Hand
Germany

Soft; smelly; hand type.

Maroilles, Marolles, Marole
Flanders, France

Semisoft and semihard, half way between Pont l'Evêque and Limburger. Full flavor, high smell, reddish brown rind, yellow within. Five inches square and 2¼ inches thick; some larger.

Martha Washington Aged Cheese
U.S.A.

Made by Kasper of Bear Creek, Wisconsin. (See under Wisconsin in Chapter 4.)

Mascarpone, or Macherone
Italy

Soft; white; delicate fresh cream from Lombardy. Usually packed in muslin or gauze bags, a quarter to a half pound.

McIntosh
Alaska

An early Klondike Cheddar named by its maker, Peter McIntosh, and described as being as yellow as that "Alaskan gold, which brought at times about ounce for ounce over mining-camp counters." The Cheddar Box by Dean Collins.

McLaren's
U.S.A.

Pioneer club type of snappy Cheddar in a pot, originally made in Canada, now by Kraft in the U.S A.

Meadowbloom
U.S.A.

Made by the Iowa State College at Ames.

Mecklenburg Skim
Germany

No more distinguished than most skim-milkers.

Meilbou
France

Made in the Champagne district.

Mein Käse
U.S.A.

Sharp; aromatic; trade-marked package.

Melfa
U.S.A.

Excellent for a processed cheese. White; flavorsome. Packed in half moons.

Melun
France Brown-red rind, yellow inside; high-smelling. There is also a Brie de Melun.

Mentelto
Italy

Sharp; goat; from the Mentelto mountains

Merignac
France

Goat.

Merovingian
Northeast France

Semisoft; white; creamy; sharp; historic since the time of the Merovingian kings.

Mersem
France

Lightly cooked.

Mesitra
Crimea

Eaten when fresh and unsalted; also when ripened. Soft, ewe's milk.

Mesost
Sweden

Whey; sweetish.

Metton
Franche-Comté, France

Season October to June.

Meuse
France

Soft; piquant; aromatic.

Midget Salami Provolone
U.S.A.

This goes Baby Goudas and Edams one better by being a sort of sausage, too.

Mignot
Calvados, France

White, No. I: Soft; fresh; in small cubes or cylinders; in season only in summer, April to September.

Passe, No. II: Soft but ripened, and in the same forms, but only seasonal in winter, October to March. Similar to Pont l'Evêque and popular for more than a century. It goes specially well with Calvados cider, fresh, hard or distilled.

Migras

Name given to spring Brie—midway between fat winter Gras and thin summer Maigre.

Milano, Stracchino di Milano, Fresco, Quardo
Italy

Similar to Bel Paese. Yellow, with thin rind. 1½ to 2¾ inches thick, 3 to 6½ pounds.

Milk Mud see Schlickermilch.

Millefiori
Milan, Italy

A Thousand Flowers—as highly scented as its sentimental name. Yet no cheeses are so freshly fragrant as these flowery Alpine ones.

Milltown Bar
U.S.A.

Robust texture and flavor reminiscent of free-lunch and old-time bars.

Milk cheeses

Milks that make cheese around the world:

U.S. pure food laws prohibit cheeses made of unusual or strange animal's milk, such as camel, llama and zebra.

Milwaukee Kümmelkäse
and Hand Käse U.S.A.

Aromatic with caraway, brought from Germany by early emigrants and successfully imitated.

Minas
Brazil

Name for the Brazilian state of Minas Geraes, where it is made. Semihard; white; round two-pounder; often chalky. The two best brands are one called Primavera, Spring, and another put out by the Swiss professors who teach the art at the Agricultural University in the State Capital, Bello Horizonte.

Minnesota Blue
U.S.A.

A good national product known from coast to coast. Besides Blue, Minnesota makes good all-American Brick and Cheddar, natural nationals to be proud of.

Mintzitra
in Macedonia; and
Mitzithra
in Greece

Sheep; soft; succulent; and as pleasantly greasy as other sheep cheeses from Greece. It's a by-product of the fabulous Feta.

Modena, Monte
U.S.A.

Made in U.S.A. during World War II. Parmesan-type.

Mohawk Limburger Spread
U.S.A.

A brand that comes in one-pound jars.

Moliterno
Italy

Similar to Caciocavallo. (See.)

Monceau
Champagne, France

Semihard, similar to Maroilles.

Moncenisio
Italy

Similar to Gorgonzola.

Mondseer, Mondseer Schachtelkäse, Mondseer Schlosskäse
Austria

This little family with a lot of long names is closely related to the Münster tribe, with very distant connections with the mildest branch of the Limburgers.

The Schachtelkäse is named from the wooden boxes in which it is shipped, while the Schlosskäse shows its class by being called Castle Cheese, probably because it is richer than the others, being made of whole milk.

Money made of cheese
China

In the Chase National Bank collection of moneys of the world there is a specimen of "Cheese money" about which the curator, Farran Zerbee, writes: "A specimen of the so-called 'cheese money' of Northern China, 1850-70, now in the Chase Bank collection, came to me personally some thirty years ago from a woman missionary, who had been located in the field where she said a cake form of condensed milk, and referred to as 'cheese,' was a medium of exchange among the natives. It, like other commodities, particularly compressed tea, was prized as a trading medium in China, in that it had value as nutriment and was sufficiently appreciated by the population as to be exchangeable for other articles of service."

Monk's Head see Tête de Moine.

Monostorer
Transylvania, Rumania

Ewe's milk.

Monsieur
France

Soft; salted; rich in flavor.

Monsieur Fromage see Fromage de Monsieur Fromage.

Montana
Catalonia

A mountain cheese.

Montasio
Austria and Italy

Usually skimmed goat and cow milk mixed. When finished, the rind is often rubbed with olive oil or blackened with soot. It is eaten both fresh, white and sweet, and aged, when it is yellow, granular and sharp, with a characteristic flavor. Mostly used when three to twelve months old, but kept much longer and grated for seasoning. Widely imitated in America.

Montauban de Bretagne, Fromage de
Brittany, France

A celebrated cheese of Brittany.

Montavoner
Austria

Sour and sometimes sweet milk, made tasty with dried herbs of the Achittea family.

Mont Blanc
France

An Alpine cheese.

Mont Cenis
Southeastern France Usually made of all three available milks, cow, goat and sheep; it is semi-hard and blue-veined like the other Roquefort imitations, Gex and Septmoncel. Primitive methods are still used in the making and sometimes the ripening is done by penicillium introduced in moldy bread. Large rounds, eighteen by six to eight inches, weighing twenty-five pounds.

Mont-des-Cats
French Flanders

Trappist monk-made Port-Salut.

Montdidier
France

A fresh cream.

Mont d'or, le, or Mont Dore
Lyonnais, France

Soft; whole milk; originally goat, now cow; made throughout the Rhone Valley. Fat, golden-yellow and "relished by financiers" according to Victor Meusy. Between Brie and Pont l'Evêque but more delicate than either, though not effeminate. Alpin and Riola are similar. The best is still turned out at Mont d'Or, with runners-up in St. Cyr and St. Didier.

Montavoner
Austria

A sour-milker made fragrant with herbs added to the curd.

Monterey
Mexico

Hard; sharp; perhaps inspired by Montery Jack that's made in California and along the Mexican border.

Monterey Jack see Chapter 4.

Monthéry
Seine-et-Oise, France

Whole or partly skimmed milk; soft in quality and large in size, weighing up to 5½ pounds. Notable only for its patriotic tri-color in ripening, with whitish mold that turns blue and has red spots.

Montpellier
France

Sheep.

Moravian
Czechoslovakia

Semihard and sharp.

Morbier
Bresse, France

In season from November to July.

Mostoffait
France

A little-known product of Champagne.

Mother's milk

In his book about French varieties, Les Fromages, Maurice des Ombiaux sums up the many exotic milks made into cheese and recounts the story of Paul Bert, who served a cheese "white as snow" that was so delicately appetizing it was partaken of in "religious silence." All the guests guessed, but none was right. So the host announced it was made of "lait de femme" and an astounded turophile exclaimed, "Then all of us are cannibals."

Mountain
Bavaria

Soft; yellow; sharp.

Mountain, Azuldoch see Azuldoch.

Mount Hope
U.S.A.

Yellow; mellow; mild and porous California Cheddar.

Mouse or Mouse Trap
U.S.A.

Common name for young, green, cracked, leathery or rubbery low-grade store cheese fit only to bait traps. When it's aged and sharp, however, the same cheese can be bait for caseophiles.

Mozzarella
Italy

Soft; water-buffalo milk; moistly fresh and unripened; bland, white cooking cheese put up in balls or big bowl-like cups weighing about a half pound and protected with wax paper. The genuine is made at Cardito, Aversa, Salernitano and in the Mazzoni di Capua. Like Ricotta, this is such a popular cheese all over America that it is imitated widely, and often badly, with a bitter taste.

Mozzarella-Affumicata, also called Scamozza
Italy

Semisoft; smooth; white; bland; un-salted. Put up in pear shapes of about one pound, with tan rind, from smoking.

Eaten chiefly sliced, but prized, both fresh and smoked, in true Italian one-dish meals such as Lasagne and Pizza.

Mozzarinelli
Italy

A pet name for a diminutive edition of Mozzarella.

Mrsav see Sir Posny.

Münster
Germany

German originally, now made from Colmar, Strassburg and Copenhagen to Milwaukee in all sorts of imitations, both good and bad. Semihard; whole milk; yellow inside, brick-red outside; flavor from mild to strong, depending on age and amount of caraway or anise seed added. Best in winter season, from November to April.

Münster is a world-wide classic that doubles for both German and French. Géromé is a standard French type of it, with a little longer season, beginning in April, and a somewhat different flavor from anise seed. Often, instead of putting the seeds inside, a dish of caraway is served with the cheese for those who like to flavor to taste.

In Alsace, Münster is made plain and also under the name of Münster au Cumin because of the caraway.

American imitations are much milder and marketed much younger. They are supposed to blend the taste of Brick and Limburger; maybe they do.

Mustard
U.S.A.

A processed domestic, Gruyère type.

Myjithra

Imitated with goat's milk in Southern Colorado.

Mysost, Mytost
Scandinavia

Made in all Scandinavian countries and imitated in the U.S.A. A whey cheese, buttery, mild and sweetish with a caramel color all through, instead of the heavy chocolate or dark tobacco shade of Gjetost. Frimost is a local name for it. The American imitations are cylindrical and wrapped in tin foil.

N

Nagelkassa (Fresh), Fresh Clove Cheese, called Nageles in Holland
Austria

Skim milk; curd mixed with caraway and cloves called nails, nagel, in Germany and Austria. The large flat rounds resemble English Derby.

Nantais, or Fromage du Curé, Cheese of the Curate
Brittany, France

A special variety dedicated to some curate of Nantes.

Nessel
England

Soft; whole milk; round and very thin.

Neufchâtel, or Petit Suisse
Normandy, France

Soft; whole milk; small loaf. See Ancien Impérial, Bondon, and Chapter 9.

New Forest
England

Cream cheese from the New Forest district.

Nieheimer
Westphalia, Germany

Sour milk; with salt and caraway seed added, sometimes beer or milk. Covered lightly with straw and packed in kegs with hops to ripen. Both beer and hops in one cheese is unique.

Niolo
Corsica

In season from October to May.

Noekkelost or Nögelost
Norway

Similar to spiced Leyden or Edam with caraway, and shaped like a Gouda.

Nordlands-Ost "Kalas"
U.S.A.

Trade name for an American imitation of a Scandinavian variety, perhaps suggested by Swedish Nordost.

Nordost
Sweden

Semisoft; white; baked; salty and smoky.

North Wilts
Wiltshire, England

Cheddar type; smooth; hard rind; rich but delicate in flavor. Small size, ten to twelve pounds; named for its locale.

Nostrale
Northwest Italy

An ancient-of-days variety of which there are two kinds:
I. Formaggio Duro: hard, as its name says, made in the spring
when the cows are in the valley.
II. Formaggio Tenero: soft and richer, summer-made with milk
from lush mountain-grazing.

Notruschki (cheese bread)
Russia

Made with Tworog cheese and widely popular.

Nova Scotia Smoked
U.S.A.

The name must mean that the cheese was smoked in the Nova Scotia manner, for it is smoked mostly in New York City, like sturgeon, to give the luxurious flavor.

Nuworld
U.S.A.

This semisoft newcomer arrived about 1954 and is advertised as a brand-new variety. It is made in the Midwest and packed in small, heavily waxed portions to preserve all of its fine, full aroma and flavor.

A cheese all America can be proud of, whether it is an entirely new species or not.

O

Oaxaca see Asadero.

Oka, or La Trappe
Canada

Medium soft; aromatic; the Port-Salut made by Trappist monks in Canada after the secret method of the order that originated in France. See Trappe.

Old English Club
U.S.A.

Not old, not English, and representing no club we know of.

Old Heidelberg
U.S.A.

Soft, piquant rival of Liederkranz.

Oléron Isle, Fromage d'Ile
France

A celebrated sheep cheese from this island of Oléron.

Olive Cream
U.S.A.

Ground olives mixed to taste with cream cheese. Olives rival pimientos for such mildly piquant blends that just suit the bland American taste. A more exciting olive cream may be made with Greek Calatma olives and Feta sheep cheese.

Olivet
Orléans, France

Soft sheep cheese sold in three forms:
I. Fresh; summer, white; cream cheese.
II. Olivet-Bleu—mold inoculated; half-ripened.
III. Olivet-Cendré, ripened in the ashes. Season, October to June.

Olmützer Quargel, also Olmützer Bierkäse
Austria

Soft; skim milk-soured; salty. The smallest of hand cheeses, only ½ of an inch thick by 1½ inches in diameter. Packed in kegs to ripen into beer cheese and keep the liquid contents of other kegs company. A dozen of these little ones are packed together in a box ready to drop into wine or beer drinks at home or at the bar.

Oloron, or Fromage de la Vallee d'ossour
Béarn, France

In season from October to May.

Onion with garlic links
U.S.A

Processed and put up like frankfurters, in links.

Oporto
Portugal

Hard; sharp; tangy. From the home town of port wine.

Orkney
Scotland

A country cheese of the Orkney Islands where it is buried in the oat bin to ripen, and kept there between meals as well. Oatmeal and Scotch country cheese are natural affinities. Southey, Johnson and Boswell have all remarked the fine savor of such cheese with oatcakes.

Orléans
France

Named after the Orléans district Soft; creamy; tangy.

Ossetin, Tuschninsk, or Kasach
Caucasus

Comes in two forms:
I. Soft and mild sheep or cow cheese ripened in brine for two months.
II. Hard, after ripening a year and more in brine. The type made of
sheep milk is the better.

Ostiepek, Oschtjepek, Oschtjpeka
Czechoslovakia

Sheep in the Carpathian Mountains supply the herb-rich milk for this type, similar to Italian Caciocavallo.

Oswego
U.S.A.

New York State Cheddar of distinction.

Oude Kaas
Belgium

Popular in France as Boule de Lille.

Oust, Fromage de
Roussillon, France

Of the Camembert family.

Ovár
Hungarian