Chaource

Chaource takes its name from the village of Chaource, in the bocage country south of Troyes in the Aube. Cheese has been made there since the Middle Ages — a local tradition credits its recipe to monks, often the Cistercians, who are said to have passed it to farming families, though this monastic origin is told as tradition rather than established fact. The cheese was well known by the late medieval period. An appellation file was opened in 1970 and Chaource was granted Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée status in 1977 (now AOP); its zone covers parts of the Aube and the neighbouring Yonne. The rules require a slow, principally lactic coagulation lasting at least twelve hours and a slow, spontaneous draining, the techniques that define the cheese.

Cut a wedge and the structure shows: a velvety white rind, then a band of cream just inside it, and a paler, firmer core. Young Chaource is chalky and fresh, tasting of cream, mushrooms and a clean lactic tang, with a pronounced salt edge. As it ripens the paste softens inward from the rind until it is spoonably soft, the flavour deepening and turning faintly bitter at the rind, nutty and earthy beneath. It is rich — a 50%-fat cheese — and is best at room temperature on good bread, where its creaminess can fully express.

Chaource is a lactic, soft-ripened cheese, and almost everything comes from a slow, gentle set. Rather than relying on rennet to coagulate the milk quickly, the curd is acidified by lactic-acid bacteria over twelve hours or more, with only a trace of rennet; this produces a fragile, fine-grained curd. It is then ladled into moulds and left to drain spontaneously under its own weight, never pressed — which is why the paste stays moist, high in fat and delicate. The surface is colonised by Penicillium candidum, the white mould that forms the bloomy rind and, working inward during two to four weeks of affinage, breaks down the paste so that a ripe cheese runs creamy just beneath the skin while the centre stays firmer.