Someone elsewhere has claimed ‘Pasteurised cheese is not real cheese. Ask the French.’ The implication is that the French do not pasteurise their cheese, and the way he said is that no French cheese is pasteurised. Whether that’s true, I don’t know. I do know that it’s a contentious issue in France. The gist of the discussion is that cheese made in the United States is bad, because we pasteurise it. There’s no way an American-made cheese can be good. :rolleyes: (Well, presumably if it is artisan-made by vegan elves who toil away at making something they can never eat, and they don’t pasteurise it, then it’s ‘real’.)
The question is this: What popular ‘real’ cheeses that are not made in the U.S., are pasteurised?
Stilton.
ETA: or rather, it just be made from pasteurized milk, but I think that’s what you’re getting at.
France and the UK are massive cheese manufacturers, hundreds and hundreds of varieties and many (possibly most) of them are made from pasteurised milk.
You’ll often find that the major manufacturers will use pasteurised milk but the same varieties at an artisan level may well be made with unpasteurised milk.
Of course some cheeses must always be made with unpasteurised milk (e.g. parmesan)
Before the big push to take raw milk cheese off the international market, I bought and ate a French brand of Camembert called “Le Chatelain”. It used to be a classic stinky Camembert, highly flavorful and gooey.
Then the ban kicked in, and Le Chatelain has never been the same. They must now make it with pasteurized (cooked) milk. All the powerful funk is gone and it’s a bland cheese that could have been produced anywhere in America.
A few cheesemakers can make funky, wonderful cheeses using pasteurized milk, but they’re hard to find.
Makes sense - the larger the volume the less control you’ll have over your source milk, so pasteurisation and then adding controlled cultures is the only way to maintain consistency.
The law in the U.S. is that cheese made from raw milk must be aged at least 60 days, and must be labeled as unpasteurized. There are American cheeses made from unpasteurized milk, although these tend to be from small producers. Here are some:
Bayley Hazen Blue
Alpha Tolman
Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company Original Blue
Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Uplands Cheese Company