Danablu

Denmark already had a dairy industry built on cow's milk when makers looked at the fame of Roquefort in the twentieth century. Roquefort needed sheep's milk and the caves at Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. Danish dairies built a different blue: cow's milk, made in creameries, with a strong vein and a high salt.

The result took the name Danablu, and also Danish Blue. It was an answer to an imported luxury, made from the milk Denmark had. It did not pretend to be a medieval village cheese. That honesty is useful. The cheese is industrial in the plain sense of the word. Many dairies can make it to a similar pattern, which is why a wedge from a supermarket can taste close to the last one.

Cow's milk is set, the curd is molded, and a blue mold is grown through a pierced paste. The cheeses are salted firmly and ripened until the veins are broad and the color of the paste is pale cream. There is no clothbound farmhouse path and no sheep flock in the rules of the style.

Salt, moisture, and the amount of blue are the levers. Danablu is usually creamier and saltier than Stilton, and saltier than a young Gorgonzola dolce. It is not aged into a hard grating cheese. A wheel that has dried into crumbs at the edge can still be used for cooking if the smell is clean. The style expects a moist, veined wedge.

The first taste is salt, then a sharp blue tang, then cream. The veins are strong. The paste between them is milder and a little sweet. The smell is pungent and clean when the cheese is sound. It should not smell of ammonia or of wet cardboard.

People who find Roquefort too sheepy, or Stilton too dry, sometimes prefer this softer salty blue. People who want a gentle blue will find Danablu loud. The salt is not a mistake to rinse away. It is the character. Taste it before you salt the rest of the dish.

Crumble it into a salad, especially with bitter leaves, apple, or a sharp dressing that can meet the salt. Stir a small piece into a cream sauce, a burger, or a steak butter. On an open sandwich of rye bread it behaves like other strong Danish cheeses: a thin layer is enough.

Do not use it as if it were mozzarella, and do not use a large amount in a mild soup. It will salt and blue the whole pot. Gorgonzola dolce is the substitute when you want a sweeter, softer sauce. Roquefort is the substitute when a recipe depends on sheep's milk. For a salad that only says blue cheese, Danablu is often the cheese the writer had in the shop.

Danablu is a Danish cheese, sold in Denmark and exported as a standard blue in shops that do not carry a cave-ripened wheel. It became one of the blues people actually eat, because it is available and because the flavor is obvious.

This page does not treat the name as a protected appellation. It treats it as the Danish cow's-milk blue made in that twentieth-century image of Roquefort. Other countries make salty cow's-milk blues too. When a recipe says Danish blue or Danablu, it is asking for this salty, pale, heavily veined style, not for a spoonable sweet Gorgonzola.