Gouda

Gouda, in South Holland, was a market town. Cheeses from the surrounding dairies were traded there, and the town's name became the cheese's name. The style is old in the Netherlands: a washed-curd, pressed cow's-milk wheel made to keep and to travel. Dutch trade then carried it out of the country for centuries.

The name was never reserved for one city alone in the way a single appellation reserves a small zone. Makers in other countries used it freely. Inside the Netherlands, Gouda Holland names a protected cheese with rules on place and method. Farmhouse Gouda, often sold as boerenkaas, is a more particular wheel, frequently raw-milk and stronger than a young export cheese. A red or yellow wax baby Gouda, a five-year farmhouse wheel, and a foreign block can share one word and almost nothing else.

The curd is washed. Part of the whey is replaced with water, which pulls out lactose and keeps the cheese from becoming very sour. The curd is pressed into wheels. Young cheeses for export are often coated in wax. The wax keeps moisture in and protects the wheel. It is a coating, not a rind you eat.

Aging is a choice inside the same method. A young Gouda is ready in weeks and stays flexible. An aged Gouda, sometimes labeled oude, is held until it is hard, dark gold, and crystalline. The crystals are a sign of age. Farmhouse wheels may have a natural rind instead of wax, and a flavor that changes with the farm's milk. None of these steps belongs only to the city of Gouda anymore. The city supplied the name and the market.

Young Gouda tastes of butter, salt, and sweet milk, with a smooth chew. It is mild on purpose. Aged Gouda tastes of butterscotch, nuts, salt, and broth, and it breaks into shards. A very old wheel can be intensely savory and slightly sweet at the same time. That sweetness is the milk, concentrated, not sugar added to the cheese.

Wax says little about flavor. A waxed young cheese should smell clean and buttery. An aged cheese should smell deep and nutty, not of rancid fat. If an old Gouda is harshly bitter, it may have been stored badly or pushed past a good age. Crystals are not the bitterness. They crunch. They should not sting.

Slice young Gouda for bread, sandwiches, and a breakfast plate. It melts well in a grilled sandwich, a sauce, or a potato dish when you want fat and softness without a sharp tang. Eat aged Gouda in pieces on a board, with mustard, beer, apple, or bread. Grate a dry aged wheel over a finished dish in small amounts.

Do not cook a precious old Gouda as if it were the young waxed wheel. It will oil off and waste the crystal and the savor. Do not serve a baby Gouda as the center of a serious cheese board and expect it to taste like the aged one. Edam is the Dutch cousin that is traditionally leaner and milder. Cheddar is the substitute when a recipe wants a sharper melt. An aged Gouda is the substitute when a board needs a hard, sweet, crystalline cheese and you have no Parmesan.

The Netherlands still makes young cheese for daily bread and aged cheese for keeping, and it exports both. Gouda is also made in many other countries, sometimes well and sometimes as a plain mild block. In the Netherlands it is ordinary food. Abroad, the aged wheel is often the one treated as a specialty, while the waxed young cheese is the one in the supermarket.

Read for Gouda Holland when you want the protected Dutch cheese. Read for boerenkaas or a named farm when you want a farmhouse wheel. Read the age in every case. A recipe that says Gouda and then melts it means young Gouda. A recipe that puts Gouda on a board with the word aged, old, or oude means the crystalline cheese. The city is one place. The word is a world style plus a Dutch protection that shares the city's name.