The Cheese Course and Its Place at Table

The cheese course belongs to the French table as a distinct moment between the savoury dishes and the sweet, and Larousse Gastronomique treats it as an established part of the ordered French meal. Its anchor is the country of the great cheese regions, from Normandy and the Île-de-France to the Jura, the Auvergne and the Pyrenees, where cheese was a daily food long before it became a course.

In the classical order of the French meal, cheese follows the main dishes and the salad and precedes the dessert. The placing is practical as well as customary: it allows the wine remaining from the meat to be finished with the cheese, and it gives the table a pause before sweetness. Larousse Gastronomique presents cheese as the point at which the meal turns from the cooked to the matured, a product finished by time and the affineur rather than by the kitchen. The cheese is brought to the table whole, on a board or in a basket, so that the guest may cut for himself. Several cheeses are offered rather than one, and a sound selection draws on different families: a fresh or bloomy-rind cheese such as brie de Meaux AOP or camembert de Normandie AOP, a washed-rind cheese such as munster AOP or époisses AOP, a firm pressed cheese such as comté AOP or cantal AOP, a blue such as roquefort AOP, and a goat's cheese such as crottin de Chavignol AOP. The cheeses are taken from the mildest to the strongest, so that the later ones do not overwhelm the earlier. The cheese is removed from the cold in good time and served at room temperature, when its texture has softened and its aroma is open. The cut respects the form of the cheese: a wedge is cut from the point towards the rind so that each guest receives both centre and edge, a round is cut in segments, and a log or pyramid is sliced across. The rind is left to the guest's choice, and bread, rather than biscuits, is the usual accompaniment. The wine follows the same logic of region and strength. A red of some age suits the firm cheeses, a sweet wine the blue, and a crisp white the goat's cheese, while the wines of a cheese's own country frequently serve it best. In the grander service of the nineteenth century the cheese stood among the entremets, but the modern order, in which it sits alone before the dessert, is the one the French table has kept. The course remains a measure of a table's seriousness. A good cheese board asks for knowledge of the seasons, of maturity and of the producers, and it asks nothing of the cook beyond judgement in the buying and care in the keeping.

The course is arranged so that the palate moves from the mild and milky to the pronounced and piquant, the wine changing with it. Salt, fat and ripeness in the cheese meet the acidity and tannin of the wine, and bread clears the mouth between one cheese and the next.