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Cheese from France, Seine-et-Marne

Coulommiers

Coulommiers is a small, soft, mould-ripened cow cheese first made near Coulommiers in Seine-et-Marne, 5 or 6 inches across and an inch thick in 1928. In the 1953 USDA account of the modified Coulommiers made in the United States and Canada, milk is set with lactic starter and rennet at about 86 °F, and the soft curd is ladled into two-part hoops, drained and salted. A white Penicillium camemberti rind grew fast on Coulommiers in a 2010 study, and the cheese is usually eaten fresh.

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe 1953 USDA handbook gives a yield of 1⅓ to 2 pounds of cheese per gallon of milk, for cheeses of ¾ to 1 pound. Its method is the modified Coulommiers made in the United States and Canada; it says the French cheese is made like the smallest Brie. No French standard was found.
Fresh whole cow milk, or evening and morning milk mixed[usda-hb54]
Lactic starter and rennetDosed so the curd is firm enough to cut in 30 minutes, in 1–1½ hours, or in 2–3 hours[usda-hb54]
Fine salt, or a strong brine[usda-hb54]
Penicillium camembertiThe white surface mould[ledrean2010]
Starterlactic starter

Total time across the recorded steps: 9.1 days – 23 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countPenicillium camemberti27–30 °C

What changes: Starter and rennet go into milk at about 30 °C, and it sets into a soft curd

Step 1 of 6
Warm the milk, add starter and rennet
Time
30 min – 3 h
Reported
Temperature
27–30 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Penicillium camemberti

The surface is stirred gently for a few minutes so the cream does not rise, then left still. Some soft curd is set aside to make smooth tops later. Output: soft curd.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Coulommiers is a small, soft, mould-ripened cow cheese first made near Coulommiers in Seine-et-Marne, 5 or 6 inches across and an inch thick in 1928. In the 1953 USDA account of the modified Coulommiers made in the United States and Canada, milk is set with lactic starter and rennet at about 86 °F, and the soft curd is ladled into two-part hoops, drained and salted. A white Penicillium camemberti rind grew fast on Coulommiers in a 2010 study, and the cheese is usually eaten fresh. Made in 6 steps over 9.1 days – 23 days. The longest step, eat fresh or hold cool, takes 7–14 days (Sanders G.P. 1953) and runs at 11–16 °C (Sanders G.P. 1953). Penicillium camemberti, which grew fast on Coulommiers from day 2 to day 9 (66 to 119 mg mycelium per g) and peaked at day 9 does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step7–14 daysReported[usda-hb54]Eat fresh or hold cool
Temperature11–16 °CReported[usda-hb54]Eat fresh or hold cool

What makes this one different

Coulommiers is about the size of the smallest Brie, 5–6 inches across against up to 16 inches for the largest. Some authorities count it as the same cheese, others as a Brie ripened for a shorter time. Unlike Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun, its name is not in the EU register of protected names.

Size
About 5½ inches across and 1–1½ inches thick, ¾ to 1 pound (1953); 5 or 6 inches across and 1 inch thick, about 1 pound (1928)
Composition (1953)
Moisture 55–60%, fat 22–24%, protein 13–15%, salt 2–2.5%
Status
Not among the protected names in the EU eAmbrosia register (searched October 2026)

Related ferments

Safety

Coulommiers is a soft, mould-ripened cheese like Brie and Camembert. The 1953 USDA account does not say whether the milk is pasteurised. ANSES, the French food safety agency, names soft raw-milk cheeses with a flowery rind, such as Camembert, Brie and crottin, among the main sources of Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli outbreaks from raw-milk cheese in France. It advises pregnant women, people with weak immunity, people over 65 and young children not to eat raw-milk cheeses, except pressed cooked cheeses such as Gruyère or Comté. In one Polish retail sample, cadaverine reached 828 mg/kg; across the 125 cheeses studied, high cadaverine went with Hafnia alvei.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Meaux, Coulommiers and Melun in Seine-et-Marne were known for Brie, often under local names. By 1928 Coulommiers was described as a small Brie of about a pound, and by 1953 a modified Coulommiers was being made in the United States and Canada as a simple home cheese.

  1. [usda-hb54] Sanders G.P. 1953, Cheese varieties and descriptions, USDA Agriculture Handbook 54 (Coulommiers, pp. 35–36; Brie)archive
  2. [doane1928] Doane C.F., Lawson H.W., revised by Matheson K.J. 1928, Varieties of cheese, descriptions and analyses, USDA Bulletin 608 (Brie; Coulommiers)archive
  3. [ledrean2010] Le Dréan G., Mounier J., Vasseur V. et al. 2010, Quantification of Penicillium camemberti and P. roqueforti mycelium by real-time PCR to assess their growth dynamics during ripening cheese, International Journal of Food Microbiology 138:100–107 (abstract)paper
  4. [pawulgruba2025] Pawul-Gruba M., Denis E., Kiljanek T., Osek J. 2025, Prevalence of biogenic amines and their relation to the bacterial content in ripened cheeses on the retail market in Poland, Foods 14(14):2478paper
  5. [eambrosia-list] European Commission, eAmbrosia register of geographical indications, full list of protected names (no entry for Coulommiers; Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun are listed)gov
  6. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov