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Cheese from Switzerland

Cooked hard alpine cheese family (Comté, Gruyère and Emmentaler as templates)Emmentaler

Raw cow milk is set in a copper vat, cut into fine grains and cooked to the mid-50s °C. The curd is pressed into large wheels, salted and ripened for months on spruce boards; in the eyed types a warm cellar lets propionic bacteria blow holes.

Fully documentedCheese5.6 months – 6.1 months

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedFamily template, so the ingredients are the ones cooked alpine cheeses share. The specifications read give no fixed amounts; Comté PDO caps the total of all starters at 0.5 % of the milk.
Raw cow milkComté PDO: never heated above 40 °C before renneting; Gruyère AOP: never cooled below 15 °C[comte-cdc][gruyere-blw]
Starter culturesComté PDO: a starter grown on raw whey is compulsory; Gruyère AOP: the dairy's own cultures[comte-cdc][gruyere-blw]
Propionic cultureFor eyed types; the US Swiss standard requires propionic acid bacteria[cfr133-195]
RennetComté PDO: commercial bovine rennet[comte-cdc][gruyere-blw]
SaltDry salt or brine, then rubbed on the rind with brine or morge[comte-cdc][cfr133-195]
Starterthermophilic cultures (natural whey or selected), plus Propionibacterium freudenreichii for eyed types

Total time across the recorded steps: 5.6 months – 6.1 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
up to 40 °C

What changes: Starter and calf rennet go into raw milk in a copper vat and it sets

Step 1 of 8
Set the milk in a copper vat
Time
Not documented
Temperature
up to 40 °C
Set
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
S. thermophilus
Lactobacillus helveticus
L. delbrueckii
P. freudenreichii

Output: curd.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
gel
Colour
white to cream

Microbes at work in this step

thermophilic starters begin souring the milk

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

Raw cow milk is set in a copper vat, cut into fine grains and cooked to the mid-50s °C. The curd is pressed into large wheels, salted and ripened for months on spruce boards; in the eyed types a warm cellar lets propionic bacteria blow holes. Made in 8 steps over 5.6 months – 6.1 months. The longest step, ripen for months on spruce boards, takes at least 3.9 months (Ministère de l'agriculture 2025) and runs at 5–19 °C (Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture 1999). Streptococcus thermophilus, in a 9-month-old Swiss hard cheese wheel from a Western Swiss dairy and Lactobacillus helveticus, in the same Swiss hard cheese wheel do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepat least 3.9 monthsSet[comte-cdc][gruyere-blw][emmentaler-ch]Ripen for months on spruce boards
Temperature5–19 °CSet[gruyere-blw][comte-cdc][emmentaler-ch]Ripen for months on spruce boards
AciditypH 5.3Reported[bonilauri2026]Collect the curd and press it

What makes this one different

The curd is cut very fine and cooked to 52–59 °C, then pressed into very large wheels and ripened for months. The grana cheeses cook as hot but use part-skimmed milk and age longer; eyed types add a warm cellar for propionic bacteria.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Emmentaler AOPThe largest wheels; a warm cellar for big eyes; graded at 4 months.
  • Le Gruyère AOPSmear rind; at least 5 months on spruce boards.
  • Comté AOPMade in fruitières; at least 120 days.

Made the cooked hard alpine cheese family way

Other cooked hard alpine cheese family kinds

Made the same way, each with what its own sources record.

Pleasant Ridge Reserve

Cheese from United States, Wisconsin

Compared by its maker to alpage Beaufort and Gruyère and made only in the grazing season, so each batch reflects the pasture; it is a single farm's cheese, not a regional type.

Milk
Milk from about 150 crossbred cows grazing 500 acres, used only while the cows are on pasture
Ripening
aged 9+ monthsReported

Sources: Uplands Cheese

Safety

The milk is raw. A December 2025 review of Italian Grana-type cheeses says that in Swiss hard cheese moderate heat, a pH drop to about 5.3 within 24 h and long ripening together contributed to pathogen elimination. The one Swiss study it cites added Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis to the milk, and the organism was gone from the Emmental core by day 90, so the review stresses long ripening for mycobacteria. The UK NHS counts hard cheeses such as gruyère as safe in pregnancy, unpasteurised or not. The US CDC is stricter. It tells pregnant women, people over 65 and people with weak immunity to avoid any raw-milk cheese unless it is heated to 165 °F (74 °C) or until steaming hot. US Swiss cheese must be at least 60 days old.

Hazards the sources name: Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis, added to the milk in a study of Emmental, a raw-milk Swiss hard cheese, and gone from the core by day 90 (as reported in a 2025 review).

History and sources

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

A 1115 charter of the Rougemont priory mentions pressed cooked cheese (Gruyère registration summary).

  1. [comte-cdc] Ministère de l'agriculture, Cahier des charges de l'appellation d'origine « Comté », homologated by arrêté of 18 December 2025, JORF of 7 January 2026 (BO-Agri n° 2026-02); the standard amendment was published as approved in OJ C/2026/2773 of 13 May 2026spec
  2. [gruyere-blw] Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture, Résumé de la demande d'enregistrement du Gruyère (registration summary), 1999spec
  3. [emmentaler-ch] Emmentaler Switzerland (the Emmentaler AOP trade body), Maturing cheese, the secret of affinageweb
  4. [cfr133-195] US Code of Federal Regulations, 21 CFR 133.195, Swiss and emmentaler cheesegov
  5. [dalmasso2012] Dalmasso M., Aubert J., Briard-Bion V. et al. 2012, A temporal-omic study of Propionibacterium freudenreichii CIRM-BIA1 adaptation strategies in conditions mimicking cheese ripening in the cold, PLoS ONE 7:e29083paper
  6. [tintrop2025] Tintrop L.K., Meola M., Stern M.T. et al. 2025, Analytical mapping of Swiss hard cheese to highlight the distribution of volatile compounds, aroma, and microbiota, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 73:7383–7392paper
  7. [bonilauri2026] Bonilauri P., Rosamilia A., Benedetti S., Daminelli P., Losio M.N. et al. 2025, Can the Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano production process guarantee a reduction in pathogenic microorganisms equivalent to the pasteurization process?, Italian Journal of Food Safety 15(1):14524, published 16 December 2025, doi 10.4081/ijfs.2025.14524paper
  8. [nhs-preg] NHS (UK), Foods to avoid in pregnancy (cheese section)gov
  9. [cdc-listeria] CDC, Preventing Listeria Infection (web page, accessed 2026-10)gov