Port Salut Cheese

Port Salut Cheese
© Denzil Green

Port Salut is semi-soft cheese made from cow’s milk.

The cheese is ripened from the outside in by a smear of surface bacteria. It used to be brushed with brine while aging, which made it a Washed-Rind cheese, but this no longer happens, because the cheese is wrapped in plastic before aging.

This makes its orange rind edible, though it is often not edible on Port du Salut style cheeses. Inside, the cheese is a pale yellow.

It is made in disks about 9 inches wide (23 cm) that weight about 2 kg (about 5 pounds)

Port Salut is a commercial, trademarked name.

Nutrition FactsPer 1 oz (30 g)AmountCalories100Carbohydrate.16 gProtein7 gCalcium184 mg

Storage Hints

Store for up to two weeks in refrigerator.

History Notes

The cheese originated with Cistercian monks at Notre Dame du Port-du-Salut Abbey at Port-Ringeard, Entrammes (between Laval and Angers), on the Mayenne river in the département of Mayenne in Pays de la Loire, France. See Port du Salut Cheeses for more information on the Cistercians.

Port Salut Cheese
© Denzil Green

The French Revolution in 1789 forced many clergy and monks to flee France for their lives; the monks at Port Salut were no different. Their head, Dom Augustin de Lestrange, led them to la Valsainte in Switzerland. While they were gone, their lands back in France were sold, and the buildings lay abandoned. Meanwhile, the monks in exile had to have a way of making a living, and they learned how to make cheese. They were able to return to France in 1815, and the abbey at Port-Ringeard was re-acquired. They were the first monastery in France authorized by Louis XVIII to re-establish itself. They continued making the cheese back home, and it was very popular. In 1873, the Abbey sold rights of distribution to a Parisian cheese merchant, and they registered the product name in 1874 — no fools, they. In 1959, the Abbey got out of the business all together, selling all rights to a dairy company called the “Société Anonyme des Fermiers Réunis” (SAFR), part of the BEL group. Since then, the cheese is not made by the monks at the Abbey, but rather in a factory, and not at Entrammes, but rather far to the east, in the Lorraine region on the border with Germany, making its association with the monastery now merely a historical one.