Gouda Cheese

Gouda (pronounced “HOW-duh” in Dutch), is named for a place and can trace its origin back to the 13th century, making it one of the oldest cheeses still in production. Like other place-named cheeses such as cheddar or brie, “gouda” has become a generic term over time referring to its style, and is therefore often uncapitalized.

Gouda originates in the Netherlands town of the same name, but unlike a lot of place-named cheeses, the city of Gouda isn’t necessarily where the cheese was made, but rather where it was sold, with farmers from all over the country bringing their cheese to Gouda to be marketed or shipped during a time when the Dutch government allowed for this kind of monopoly. Like cheddar, the term gouda has never had a PDO — “Protected Designation of Origin” — status, meaning that it can be made anywhere, from any kind or condition of milk, with various types of rinds and inclusions, all over the world.

Gouda’s Unique Technique

Goudas do tend to have a couple of important things in common, despite the wide range of variables available when it comes to making it. The two things that give gouda its particular character, no matter where it is made, are its shape, which is a flattened wheel, and its particular make technique. All cheese is made by coagulating milk, and then pressing the resulting curds into molds. How the curds are treated: salted, cut, stacked, shaped, pressed or heated, all give rise to differing textures or flavors in cheese.

In the case of gouda, the curds are washed. (Which is not to be confused with washed rinds, which results in a very different type of cheese.) Rinsing the curds before they go into molds washes off some of the lactose, which means there is less lactose available to convert to lactic acid while the cheese ages. Without the sharpness or tang from lactic acid, goudas then tend to have very sweet flavors: a fruitiness in young goudas, becoming more nutty in older expressions, to tasting like butterscotch candy in the oldest varieties.

The Formation of Cheese Crystals

Crystals will form in aged cheeses of many varieties, but because aged goudas are so ubiquitous (and so addictive), that crystalline crunch is often associated with the type. Those cheese crystals aren’t a concentration of salt, nor sugar, despite giving the effect of cheese candy. The crystals that can be found in gouda are called tyrosine crystals, which form due to the breakdown of protein in the cheese as it ages, and are actually clusters of amino acids.

Wax On, Wax Off

Gouda is often associated with having a thick, red wax exterior. While this is not the case with all goudas, many wheels of gouda are dipped in at least a thin coating of wax or some other kind of seal. The wax is technically edible, though it hardly qualifies as delectable, but it definitely also contributes to gouda’s craveability.

Cheeses that are aged in an anaerobic environment — such as those vacuum sealed in plastic, or dipped in wax as with gouda — go through a different kind of microbial transformation than cheeses that are exposed to the air during aging. This helps preserve moisture in the cheese, which results in cheeses that still retain some of their creamy texture, even with several years of age.