E N D E I TW I O N WORLD CHEESE BOOK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Juliet Harbutt WORLD CHEESE BOOK WORLD CHEESE BOOK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JULIET HARBUTT CONTRIBUTORS ANDROUET • MARTIN ASPINWALL • VINCENZO BOZZETTI • KEVIN JOHN BROOME RAN BUCK • SAGI COOPER • DIANNE CURTIN • JIM DAVIES • SHEANA DAVIS ANGELA GRAY • RIE HIJIKATA • RUMIKO HONMA • KATIE JARVIS • MONIKA LINTON GURTH PRETTY • HANSUELI RENZ • RICHARD SUTTON • WILL STUDD KATE ARDING • AAD VERNOOIJ • STÉPHANE BLOHORN DK INDIA Senior Art Editors Ivy Roy, Ira Sharma Art Editor Era Chawla Assistant Editor Saumya Gaur Senior Editor Nidhilekha Mathur Deputy Managing Editor Bushra Ahmed Managing Editor Alicia Ingty Managing Art Editor Navidita Thapa DTP Designers Satish Chandra Gaur, Anurag Trivedi, Manish Chandra Upreti Pre-production Manager Sunil Sharma DK UK Managing Editor Dawn Henderson Managing Art Editor Christine Keilty Senior Jacket Creative Nicola Powling Producer, Pre-Production Rebecca Fallowfield Senior Producer Jen Scothern Art Director Peter Luff Category Publisher Peggy Vance 2009 Edition DK UK Project Editor Danielle Di Michiel Senior Art Editor Elly King Editorial Assistants Shashwati Tia Sarkar, Erin Boeck Motum Designer William Hicks Managing Editor Dawn Henderson Managing Art Editor Christine Keilty Senior Jacket Creative Nicola Powling Senior Production Editor Jennifer Murray Production Controller Alice Holloway Creative Technical Support Sonia Charbonnier DK INDIA DTP Designers Dheeraj Arora, Preetam Singh, Jagtar Singh Senior Designer Tannishtha Chakraborty Design Manager Romi Chakraborty Head of Publishing Aparna Sharma First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Dorling Kindersley Limited 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL A Penguin Random House Company This revised edition published in Great Britain in 2015 by Dorling Kindersley Limited 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 001 – 262224 – June/2015 Copyright © 2009, 2015 Dorling Kindersley Limited All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-02-411-86-57-2 Printed and bound in China A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com CONTENTS Introduction 6 Germany, Austria, Understanding Cheese 8 and Switzerland 232 Using this Book 9 Germany 233 Fresh Cheeses 10 Austria 236 Aged Fresh Cheeses 12 Switzerland 238 Soft White Cheeses 14 Special Features Semi-soft Cheeses 16 Emmentaler 240 Hard Cheeses 18 Blue Cheeses 20 Scandinavia 244 Flavor-added Cheeses 22 Denmark 245 The Perfect Cheese Board 24 Norway 247 Sweden 248 France 26 Finland 251 Special Features Latvia 252 Beaufort 38 Lithuania 253 Brie de Meaux 46 Comté 56 Eastern Europe and Époisses de Bourgogne 64 the Near East 254 Reblochon de Savoie 74 Greece 256 Roquefort 82 Romania 260 Sainte-Maure de Touraine 92 Slovakia 260 Turkey 261 Italy 100 Cyprus 261 Special Features Lebanon 264 Gorgonzola 108 Israel 264 Mozzarella di Bufala 118 Special Features Parmigiano-Reggiano 128 Feta 258 Taleggio 136 Halloumi 262 Spain and Portugal 144 The Americas 266 Spain 146 United States 270 Portugal 165 Canada 310 Special Features Mexico 318 Mahòn 152 Brazil 319 Manchego 160 Argentina 319 Special Features Great Britain and Monterey Jack 286 Ireland 168 England 170 China and Japan 320 Scotland 206 China 322 Wales 212 Japan 323 Ireland 215 Special Features Australia and Cheddar 178 New Zealand 326 Stilton 192 Yarg Cornish Cheese 200 Australia 328 Caboc 210 New Zealand 335 Caerphilly 216 Glossary 344 Low Countries 224 Index 346 Belgium 225 Contributors 351 The Netherlands 228 Acknowledgments 352 Special Features Gouda 230 Introduction Evidence of cheesemaking dates back to 2800 BCE, but the discovery of cheese would have come about as a happy accident. Any milk left to warm by a fire or stored in a sack made from the stomach of an animal would have soured, causing the milk solids (the curds) and liquid (the whey) to coagulate and separate—allowing humans to learn that their most precious commodity, milk, could be preserved in the form of cheese and, eventually, that rennet, an enzyme found in the stomach of the milk-producing animal, was the coagulant. The Story of Cheese know today as Trappist or monastery cheeses, of which Now, some 5,000 years later, cheese is made all over Maroilles of Northern France was probably the first. the world with all kinds of milk, from reindeer’s milk in Historically, a cheese’s size was determined by the Lapland, to buffalo’s milk in Australia, and yak’s milk amount of milk available and the proximity to the in the Kingdom of Bhutan. The miracle of cheese is that, nearest market. Hence, mountain cheese tended to although milk tastes virtually the same the world over, be large, with the farmers combining their milk to make the diversity of textures, tastes, and aromas of cheese slow-ripening cheeses they could sell at the end of the is almost infinite, and virtually any cheese can be made summer months when the cows returned to the valleys. anywhere in the world. The size, shape, and milk of a Those made in the valleys and near large markets would cheese, however, has been determined by such diverse have been smaller, quicker to ripen, and sold at weekly N external forces as historical events, centuries O of experimentation, religious markets. Shape was determined I by the sophistication of the T orders, and the terrain, while C maker and the raw materials U the nuances of texture and available to make the molds, D taste are influenced by the O whether woven grass, fired raw materials—the type R clay, or wood. T and breed of animal, the N I soil, the grazing, the climate, Today, Europe’s traditional the microclimate, and the cheeses are typically made ingenuity of the cheesemaker. in designated areas by various artisan producers European cheeses owe whose combined volume is much to the knowledge of sufficiently high that the 6 the Greeks and, later, the cheese can be found around Romans, who built on that the world. Classic examples knowledge and took their include raw milk Camembert recipes for making cheese de Normandie (see p44), made across Europe to feed their by only ten producers, and legions as their Empire Parmigiano-Reggiano (see spread—a legacy clearly seen p128), made by around 400 throughout Europe to this day. producers. Artisan cheeses The Middle Ages saw the developed in the last 35 years proliferation of monastic or so, however, tend to be orders across Europe and into invented by individual Britain and Ireland, particularly cheesemakers and are often the Benedictine and, later, hard to find outside their the Cistercian monks, who region or country of origin, The ancient art of cheesemaking is lovingly depicted developed the cheeses we in this colorful Swiss wood engraving. even if made in large volumes. The Raw Materials How Cheese Is Made The individual identity and personality of a cheese is Cheesemaking equipment and methods vary from determined by a number of facts of nature. cheesemaker to cheesemaker, but the basic principles involved have remained unchanged for thousands of years. The climate and landscape, including the minerals in the soil, affect what plants grow, and therefore what a 1 The milk Ideally, milk is pumped straight from the milk-producing animal eats, thereby influencing the milking parlor to the dairy, where it is checked and tested subtle flavors of the milk. Even the most unobservant to be sure it is pure and clean. It may then be pasteurized, cannot fail to see and smell the difference between fresh typically at 165ºF (73ºC) for 15 seconds. The milk is grass, wild clover, and meadow flowers compared with transferred to a vat and heated until it reaches the compacted feed, silage, or turnips. Minerals also affect the acidity level required for the type of cheese being made. speed of ripening, the texture, and the flavor of cheese. 2 Coagulation or curdling Once the acidity reaches The animal and its grazing habits add another the desired level, a special cocktail of lactic bacteria or dimension. The comfort-loving cow is largely found in lush “starter culture” is added. This both converts the lactose valleys, rich plains, and sunny mountain pastures. Goats, to lactic acid and contributes to the flavor, aroma, and unlike cows and sheep, are browsers, tearing sparse but texture of the cheese. (Too much or not enough acidity aromatic flora from fencerows, craggy peaks, rock-strewn results in imperfect cheeses.) Most cheeses are made by valleys or, when the opportunity arises, the farmer’s adding rennet (derived from the stomach of a ruminant carefully manicured garden. The resulting milk is mammal) or another coagulant to make sure the protein herbaceous, like a crisp, white wine infused with herbs, and fat in the milk bond and are not lost in the whey. becoming like marzipan or ground almonds with age. Curdling is the fundamental step in cheesemaking, The sweet, almost caramel, taste of ewe’s milk has been as the degree of coagulation determines the final I N valued in Europe and the Middle East for thousands of moisture content of the cheese, and this in turn T years. The numerous breeds adapt to almost any climate, affects the speed of the fermentation process. R O some surviving on seemingly nothing, yielding but a few D liters of milk per day, imbued with the essence of the wild, 3 Separation of curds and whey The freshly formed U aromatic herbs, grasses, and flowers that form their diet. curd looks like white jelly, while the whey is a yellow-green C T The breed of animal can also be a factor. Compared with liquid. Gently separating the curds from the whey creates I O the high yield of the Friesian, for example, Guernsey or soft, high-moisture cheeses, while cutting the curds expels N Jersey cows produce less milk with larger fat globules that more whey and produces harder cheeses. The finer the curd produce a richer, smoother, deep Monet yellow cheese, is cut, the harder and finer-grained the final cheese. The and the sweet, mellifluous milk of the Montbéliarde cow is whey is drained off once it reaches the desired acidity. renowned throughout the Savoie region of France. 4 Shaping and salting The curds are then piled into molds or hoops and may be pressed before being turned The microclimate of both the milk and the cheese room 7 out of their molds. Once out of the mold, the cheese is provide the finishing touch. Tiny, colorful, wind-borne rubbed or sprinkled with salt or soaked in brine before molds and yeasts treat each new batch of protein-rich being placed in a cold room or cellar to age. curd as a canvas on which to create their daily masterpiece, while milk-borne bacteria prefer the seclusion and 5 Aging and the affineur The aging process is the warmth of the interior to work their magic. These convert art and science of cheesemaking, as it brings out the the sweet milk sugar, lactose, into lactic acid and so begin character of the milk and the unique flavors attributed the fermentation process. Once an accident of nature, to the grazing. A good affineur, someone who ripens most have been harnessed by cheesemakers to ensure cheeses, can nurture the simplest cheese to yield every that the end result is more predictable. These microflora, nuance of flavor. Artisan cheeses vary from day to day, along with the subtleties inherent in milk, are lost when depending on the grazing, the season, the conditions in the milk is pasteurized and must be reintroduced in the the cheese room, and the cheesemaker; so, unlike wine, form of a cocktail of bacteria known as a starter culture. cheese has a vintage every day, which is what makes it Regrettably, these laboratory-produced cultures cannot so extraordinary and wonderful. emulate the complexity provided by Mother Nature. Understanding Cheese There is no universal system for identifying cheeses. Instead, FRESH CHEESES HARD CHEESES (See pp10–11) every cheese-producing country has its own system using (See pp18–19) technical terms such as semi-hard, semi-cooked, pressed uncooked, smear-ripened, or washed-curd that are all but meaningless, and confusing, to cheese lovers. By contrast, this book uses the Editor-in-Chief’s easy-to-grasp system of identifying cheese types, based on the type of rind a cheese grows and its texture. AGED FRESH CHEESES (See pp12–13) The way it works is that the amount of moisture, or whey, BLUE CHEESES that is left in the cheese determines not only the texture of (See pp20–21) the interior, but also the type of rind and molds the cheese will grow. There is the odd exception that crosses two of these categories, but most are very obvious. E S The Editor-in-Chief’s system (see pp10–23) identifies seven E E SOFT WHITE CHEESES different types of cheese: H (See pp14–15) Fresh, Aged Fresh, Soft White, Semi-soft, Hard, C Blue, and Flavor-added. G FLAVOR-ADDED N CHEESES (See pp22–23) I Using this system, with just a glance and a gentle squeeze D you can categorize 99 percent of the cheeses you meet, N A whether from a French market, a New York cheese shop, or T S elsewhere. With a little practice, you can assess a cheese’s R basic character, strength of flavor, how it will behave when E D SEMI-SOFT CHEESES cooked, and even its ripeness and quality. N (See pp16–17) U Denomination and Designation of Origin 8 Some cheeses have legally protected names linked to their provenance. Certifying the origin of a cheese recognizes its terroir (French) or tipicità (Italian), acknowledging that the unique character of each traditionally made food is a result of a complex interaction of soil, plant life, and climate, combined with traditional production methods and raw materials— a combination that cannot be replicated elsewhere. There are various national systems, such as the French AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) and the Italian DOC (Denominazione d’Origine Controllata), as well as the European In 1666, Roquefort was the first cheese to Community–created PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) for be protected by law, the forerunner for the traditional regional wines and food made throughout the EC. AOC system in France.