About this episode

This episode explores the comprehensive history and culture of French cheese, highlighting its artisan roots and current challenges.

French Cheese: The Full Story is the most comprehensive episode Fabulously Delicious has ever made on French cheese — covering everything from the monastic origins of French cheesemaking to the raw milk collapse that has seen France lose ninety percent of its artisan cheese culture in a single lifetime. French cheese history, French cheese culture, practical French cheese guidance and a passionate argument for why one of the greatest food traditions in the world deserves your full attention. The episode begins with a statistic that stops most people in their tracks. Seventy years ago one hundred percent of French cheese was made from raw milk. Today that figure is ten percent. We go back to the beginning — the monastery cellars of the Benedictines and the Cistercians, the extraordinary story of Roquefort as the oldest legally protected food in the world, the history of Camembert and Brie, and the AOC and AOP system that protects French cheese today. The heart of the episode is a guide to the five families of French cheese — the framework that makes French cheese make sense. Fresh, bloomy rind, washed rind, pressed uncooked, pressed cooked and blue — each one explained through its…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Prior

Topics covered

• French cheese history
• French cheese culture
• artisan cheese
• cheesemaking
• regional cheese tour
• cheese families
• French fromagerie

Keywords

• French cheese
• artisan cheese culture
• cheesemaking history
• raw milk
• cheese families
• French fromagerie
• regional cheeses

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Benedictines, Cistercians, AOC, AOP

Products: Roquefort, Camembert, Brie, Époisses, Munster, Comté, Reblochon, Ossau-Iraty

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Fabulously Delicious: The French Food Podcast podcast page.