Neufchâtel

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

Neufchâtel is a mould-ripened, whole-milk soft French cheese named after a town in the north of Normandy—not to be confused with the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, also a cheese-producing area but not possessing a variety named after it. Cheeses of the Neufchâtel type are manufactured not only in the area of origin but widely elsewhere, including the USA. They are always small, seldom much over 100 g (4 oz) in weight, and shapes vary widely: square (carré), heart shaped (cœur), a small loaf (Bondon), or a flattened cylinder (Gournay and Malakoff, the latter being rare now).