French Cheeses

Banon Cheese

Banon cheese is a soft, almost runny cheese that matures without a rind forming on it. The wheels are wrapped in chestnut leaves that have been soaked in brandy. The taste is like something between bacon and hay.

Beaufort Cheese

Beaufort cheese is a semi-firm, smooth French cheese. One version is made in dairies; another is made in small farmhouses up in the alps. The colour depends on whether the cheese is made in summer or winter.

Bleu de Bresse

Bleu de Bresse (aka Bresse Bleu) is a mild blue cheese with a mild, mushroomy aroma and flavour. It has a smooth, off-white rind similar to the rind on Brie and Camembert cheese. Inside, it is creamy and soft like Brie, almost spreadable, with patches of greenish-blue mould.

Bleu de Gex Cheese

Bleu de Gex is a blue cheese that is yellowy and semi-firm with pale blue-green veins. When the cheese is young, its taste is very mild; as it ages the taste gets more robust.

Bleu de Termignon

Bleu de Termignon is a rare, raw-milk farmhouse blue cheese made high in the alps of south-eastern France. The blue in the cheese develops naturally.

Bleu des Basques

Bleu des Basques is a semi-firm, slightly crumbly, blue cheese. It has bluish-grey veins, and a rind, and is milder and less salty than other blue cheeses.

Bleu des Causses

Bleu des Causses is a cow’s milk blue cheese. Inside, it is creamy but crumbly, with blue mould veins. It is is milder and less expensive than Roquefort cheese.

Boursin Cheese

Boursin cheese is a creamy, mild cheese made from pasteurized cow’s milk to which is added cream and seasonings. It is typically used as a snacking cheese but can also be used as an ingredient in cooking.

Brebis au piment d’Espelette

Brebis au piment d’Espelette is sheep’s milk cheese made with red pimento in it, and rubbed with pimento powder. The pimento taste comes through as lightly fruity rather than piquant.

Brebis de l’Abbaye de Belloc

Brebis de l’Abbaye de Belloc is a sheep’s milk cheese from the Basque area of France. As the cheese ages it takes on a stronger, caramelized flavour. You don’t eat the rind.

Brebis des Pyrénées Cheeses

Brebis des Pyrénées cheese is a generic term for cheeses made of sheep’s milk from the Pyrénées region in southern France. Brebis means a “female sheep”.

Brebis du Lochois

Brebis du Lochois is a soft sheep’s milk cheese from France. Its rind has a greyish-blue mould on it. It has a butterfat content of 45%.

Brebis Pardou

Brebis Pardou is French cheese made from the milk of béarnaise sheep. It has a brown crust on it.

Brie Cheese

Brie is a creamy French cheese popular for its smooth yet tangy, slightly acid taste and its woodsy smell. It is pale yellow inside with a crust like a soft white velvet. It can legally be made anywhere, by anyone.

Brie de Coulommiers Cheese

Brie de Coulommiers is a particular version of Brie cheese made in Seine & Marne, France. It has a more pungent smell than other Bries. It is often used as a breakfast cheese.

Brie de Meaux

Brie de Meaux is a Brie cheese made from raw cow’s milk. It is aged at least 4 weeks, developing a nutty flavour as it ages. The ones made in the fall are considered by some to be the best.

Brousse du Rove

Brousse du Rove is a fresh, unaged goat’s milk cheese. It is a very soft cream cheese that melts in your mouth. It is sold in cylinder shapes.

Brousse du Var

Brousse du Var is a fresh cheese made from sheep’s milk. It is meant to be sold on the same day it’s made. Customers used to bring their own containers to the cheese shops for the cheeses to be unmoulded into.

Camembert Cheese

Camembert is a mild, creamy cheese that is slightly salty. The outside crust may acquire a few splashes of red as it ages. The older the cheese is, the more runny it will be, but when it is too old, it develops an unpleasant ammonia smell.

Campénéac Cheese

Campénéac Cheese was a Port du Salut style cheese. It was very pliable with tiny holes. It had a very strong smell that belied its very mild taste. The nuns stopped making it in 1994.

Cantal Cheese

Cantal Cheese is a semi-firm cheese made from cow’s milk from up to three different breeds of cattle. There are both pasteurized milk and raw milk versions. Well-aged ones can be used for grating.

Chaource Cheese

Chaource is a tall, round brie-like double crème cheese. It has a mild taste with an acidic edge to it, and a slight mushroomy aroma.

Chèvre

Chèvre cheese is cheese made from goat’s milk. In particular, the term tends to indicate goat’s milk cheeses from France, or at least, made in a French style.

Chèvre Frais

Chèvre frais is a generic term for unaged French cheese made from pasteurized goat’s milk. Fresh goat’s cheeses don’t go stringy when heated; aged ones tend to.

Chevrot Cheese

Chevrot is a cheese made from goat’s milk. The cheese is sold either young or aged. Well-aged versions can be used as a grating cheese.

Crottin de Chavignol Cheese

Crottin de Chavignol cheese is shaped like a squat cylinder. It can be then be eaten at any stage from fresh to very mature. As it starts to ripen, it develops a beige rind with white mould on it, and the inside darkens from pure white to ivory.

Edel de Cléron Cheese

Édel de Cléron is a small, very soft and runny round soft cheese made from pasteurized cow’s milk. It is sold wrapped in cloth inside a tree bark container. It is typically eaten with a spoon.

Entrammes Cheese

Entrammes Cheese has come to be a term for a cheese made in the Port du Salut style.

Époisses Cheese

Epoisses is a strong-smelling, soft French cheese that ripens to runny. It has a golden, wrinkled exterior.

Etorki Cheese

Etorki is a Basque sheep’s milk cheese. The rind on the cheese is thin and orangish. Inside, the cheese is supple and light-yellow, and feels just a bit oily from the high butterfat content. The flavour is somewhat sweet; some people detect notes of burnt caramel.

Fontal Cheese

Fontal is a semi-firm cheese made in flat cylinders. It is a pale straw colour and has a mild, nutty flavour, that is almost sweet with a touch of tartness.

Fourme d’Ambert Cheese

Fourme d’Ambert cheese is a French blue cheese. It is creamy, with a milder and less salty taste than many other blue cheeses. Various tasters have detected anise, nuts and mushroom in the taste.

Fourme de Montbrison Cheese

Fourme de Montbrison is a firm blue cheese from Auvergne, France with a slightly rough, orangish-reddish rind made in a tall, cylindrical shape. Inside, it is supple and pale yellow.

Fromage Blanc Cheese

Fromage blanc is a fresh cheese that looks and spreads somewhat like cream cheese. You can use it as is, drain it a bit, or whisk it smooth. It can be used as a topping, as an ingredient in cooking, or be eaten on its own with some sugar.

Fromage Frais

Fromage frais is a fresh cheese that looks like Greek yoghurt and has the same spoonable texture. You can get fromage frais plain or flavoured, often flavoured with herbs to use as a spread for bread.

Livarot Cheese

Livarot is a soft, creamy cheese with a washed, yellow-orange rind. The rind can be eaten; most of the strong flavour is in the rind. There are five reinforcing bands around it.

Morbier Cheese

Morbier cheese is a mild-tasting cheese with a golden-brown rind. Inside, it is pale yellow, and semi-firm yet creamy and supple, with some very small holes and a thin layer of white pine ash in the middle.

Neufchâtel Cheese

Neufchâtel is a soft, spreadable cheese made from whole milk that is somewhat like a cross between cream cheese and Brie. It has a slight tang to its taste, and is often made in a heart-shape.

Ossau-Iraty Cheeses

Ossau-Iraty cheese is made from sheep’s milk. The inside may have a buttery texture when young. When older, the cheese can be grated. The cheese is often served with cherry preserves as a dessert.

Pavé Blésois Cheese

Pavé Blésois is a soft cheese made in Sologney, France using raw milk from goats. It is made in a flattened square brick shape, like a rectangular paving brick — thus its name. The curd is both uncooked and unpressed. The cheese is 8 to 10 cm (3 to 4 inches) wide, 12 ½ cm Read More

Pavé d’Auge Cheese

Pavé d’Auge is a generic name for soft, square, flat, washed-rind cheeses made in the Auge area of Normandy, France made from raw cow’s milk.

Pavé d’Isigny Cheese

Pavé d’Isigny is a semi-firm cheese from Normandy, France, with a washed-rind orange crust. It is aged for 3 to 4 weeks.

Pavé de Chirac Cheese

Pavé de Chirac cheese is made from pasteurized goat’s milk. It is a soft cheese sold in rectangular blocks that have a soft rind with light-blue mould. Inside the cheese is ivory white, and in texture somewhere between creamy and oozy, depending on the age.

Pérail de Brebis

Pérail de Brebis is a soft, strong-tasting cheese made from raw milk from sheep. It is pale yellow with a soft rind, and a soft texture like that of thick, almost runny cream.

Picodon

Picodon is a goat’s milk cheese with a firm rind covered in mould that can be blue, white or yellow, depending on the aging process. The cheese inside is firm. The taste of the cheese is both slightly sour and slightly sweet.

Pié d’Angloys

Pié d’Angloys is a French washed-rind cheese that is somewhat like a Brie. It has a white crust, an ivory coloured inside, and is soft and spreadable. It has a mild, creamy taste that is almost buttery in flavour.

Pithiviers au foin cheese

Pithiviers is a soft, round cheese with a velvety rind like Brie. The cheeses are sprinkled with hay.

Port du Salut Cheeses

Port du Salut Cheeses are washed-rind cheeses. All are semi-firm, so they can be sliced. The rind on these cheeses is typically whiffy, and is not edible on many of them. They originated with Trappist monks at the Notre Dame du Port-du-Salut Abbey in the Loire, France.

Port Salut Cheese

Port Salut is a semi-soft cheese with an edible orange rind. Inside, the cheese is a pale yellow. The rind has a distinct though not overpoweringly strong aroma.

Reblochon Cheese

Reblochon cheese is a soft, washed-rind cheese with a mild taste made from raw milk. The edible rind has white mould on it.

Roquefort Cheese

Roquefort Cheese © Denzil Green Roquefort Cheese is a blue cheese made from raw sheep’s milk curdled with calf rennet. The breed of sheep that the milk is taken from is called “Lacaune.” The wheels are 8 inches wide by 3 to 4 inches (7.5 x 10 cm) tall, and weigh 5 ½ to 6 Read More

Roquefort Cheese Day

The 26th of July celebrates the day in 1925 when the name and definition of Roquefort cheese received legal protection, making it the first cheese in history ever to do so.

Saint Agur Cheese

Saint Agur is a soft, creamy, spreadable, double-cream blue cheese with a slightly milder and less salty flavour than other blue cheeses.

Saint Agur Cheese Crème

Saint Agur Cheese (Crème) is a spreadable version of Saint Agur that comes in a tub.

Saint André Cheese

Saint André is a “triple crème” soft cheese, being 75% milk fat. It has a white, powdery rind. Inside, it has a texture like butter, and tastes somewhat like a richer version of Brie.

Saint Paulin Cheeses

Saint Paulin cheeses are made from cow’s milk. The cheeses are pressed into shape, washed in brine, then matured for about two weeks, being turned every day. The rinds are painted with an orange food colouring.

Selles-sur-Cher

Selles-sur-Cher is a semi-firm French cheese made from raw goat’s milk. The cheese is firm and white with a goaty smell and nutty flavour. The rind, which is edible, is dusted with charcoal powder.

Timadeuc Cheese

Timadeuc Cheese is a “Port du Salut” style cheese with a slightly-salty taste and a soft texture.

Tomme d’Abondance Cheese

Tomme d’Abondance is a firm, mild-flavoured cheese with a yeasty, fruity taste. The wheel-shaped cheese is an ivory-yellow colour inside, with a slightly grainy, supple texture.

Vache Qui Rit Cheese

Vache Qui Rit cheese is a soft, white processed cheese with a sweet, mild taste and butter-like texture. The name means “laughing cow”.

Vacherin d’Abondance

Vacherin d’Abondance is a creamy cheese with a pinkish crust and an almost sweet taste. The cheese is so soft that it can be eaten with a spoon from its wooden hoop casing.

Vacherin Mont d’Or

Vacherin Mont d’Or (aka Vacherin du Haut-Doubs) is a very soft cow’s milk cheese with a light beige or golden crust, sometimes with a powdery white mould on it.