camembert - a bitter, creamy cheese, the fav of french people
brie - the less bitter variant of camembert, usually loved by new cheese fans (althought camembert is where the real deal is)
coutançais - my sister in law favorite. Very hard to get in US, because it melts quite fast when transported and cannot be frozen. It’s like dessert. Can be called triple creme in some regions.

Specialties

roquefort - a crumbly blue cheese. Victoria’s favorite. Very good to put in a salad. Can be used as an anti inflammatory (the “blue” comes from a penicilin bacteria variant)
raclette - very few eats raclette as is in France. We melt it on potatoes or meat during winter time. People are looking forward the “raclette season” as Americans are looking for 4th of July bbq.

Hard Cheese

(easy to import b/c they are baked, hence duties allow importations)
emmental: the most basic cheese of all. Kind of the french Gouda. We used it as is, or for a gratin, in pasta
comté - the noble variant version of emmental. Flavorful, its taste and color vary greatly depending on the season, will be rich and taste like flowers in summer, and will taste like nuts and grass in winter. It changes based on what the cows eat ;).

More Background on Cheese

(Notes from French Cheese cognoscente friend)

The bad news?

The best European cheeses cannot be imported. Its a mix of European farmers cannot and dont want to scale operations anyway, so not enough products to try to export, but also a mix of protectionists and dumb US laws that forbid importing non pasteurized cheese.

Pasteurized cheese for French specialities do not make sense, because cheese is a controlled mold after all!

In US, the milk which contain antibiotics needs to be pasteurized/boiled first, killing all bacterias including mold. Then a new substitute for the natural mold that would have been cultivated is added to the organically dead milk biome. That changes the flavor and some cheese cannot be made that way.

It is based on the lack of knowledge that cheese mold will kill most of the bacteria dangerous for humans and also give a very long shelf life to the result - that’s why we made cheese in the first place!!

Cheese Pairings

I think “cheese pairings” are a great way we can explore the state-space of qualia at our fingertips, and how two things can combine to make something uniquely better. The list below is crowd-sourced from reddit, but add your own!


Gouda	Anjou Pairs
Gorgonzola	Pears
Brie or Camembert	Fig Jam
Very Sharp cheese	Honey or strawberry jam

Apple cheddar pie is a thing!

Source: http://cheese.jacobcole.net/
Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XRd6LRT4KpFcRn2JxoN7_m08pshKxwPv5wb8vwaJHdg
Scraped: 2026-01-30