Abondance Cheese: The Forgotten Alpine Cheese That Served Medieval Cardinals

Abondance Cheese: The Forgotten Alpine Cheese That Served Medieval Cardinals

From Fabulously Delicious: The French Food Podcast by Andrew Prior

March 31, 2026 · 10 min

About this episode

This episode explores the history and significance of Abondance cheese, a forgotten Alpine cheese served to medieval cardinals.

Abondance cheese — one of the great forgotten Alpine cheeses of France — has a story that stretches back to the medieval monasteries of Haute-Savoie and all the way to the papal conclave in Avignon in the fourteenth century, where it was served to cardinals from across Europe. In this episode of Fabulously Delicious, we're telling the full story of Abondance cheese — the semi-hard, raw cow's milk Alpine cheese from the Abondance Valley in Haute-Savoie that most people have never heard of, and that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Comté and Beaufort. The story of Abondance cheese begins with the Cistercian monks of the Abbaye d'Abondance in the French Alps, who began making this extraordinary Alpine cheese in the Middle Ages as a way of preserving milk through long mountain winters. The cheese they developed was so remarkable that by the fourteenth century it was travelling far beyond the valley — all the way to the papal conclave in Avignon, where it was served to the highest ranks of medieval European society. A tiny Alpine valley sending its cheese to the cardinals of Europe. Which tells you everything about the quality of what the monks had…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Prior

Topics covered

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Abondance cheese

Places: Haute-Savoie, Avignon

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