Mite- and larva-ripened cheeses

Also called fromage fort, fromage fort de la Croix-Rousse, tracle (Bugey).

Fromage fort is a home ferment of leftover or failed cheeses rather than a cheese made from milk. Old cheese is grated or crushed into a stoneware pot with alcohol, often white wine, and in the Lyon area leek broth; added liquid restarts fermentation. Kept going, it turns pungent and pasty, and the pot is topped up with fresh cheese as it is eaten.

1. Grate or crush old cheese into a pot
2. Ferment the grated cheese (Ain method)8–10 days
3. Add wine, broth or milk and stir
4. Keep fermenting and top up

Safety: It is made from leftover cheeses of any kind, and the pot is kept going for weeks or months with fresh cheese added. The CDC tells people at higher risk of listeriosis (pregnant women, newborns, people 65 or older, people with a weak immune system) to avoid any cheese made from raw milk unless it is heated until steaming hot. The leftover cheeses in the pot may include raw-milk ones.

• Doane C.F., Lawson H.W., revised by Matheson K.J. 1928, Varieties of cheese, descriptions and analyses, USDA Bulletin 608 (Fromage Fort)
• Wikipédia (fr), Fromage fort (outline only)
• CDC, Preventing Listeria Infection (31 January 2025)

Also called Milbenkäse, Mellnkase, Würchwitzer Milbenkäse, mite cheese.

Quark flavoured with salt and caraway is shaped, dried and laid in crates with live cheese mites and rye flour. The mites ripen the cheese over several months, and it is eaten with the mites. Their defence secretion gives it a lemon-like note.

Milk

Skim-milk quark

Ripening

Several months with live mites (TU Darmstadt)

Flavour source

Neral, a lemon-oil compound in the mites' secretion; absent once the mites are removed

1. Season the quark and shape it
2. Lay the cheeses in crates of mites and rye flour
3. Ripen with the mitesSeveral months (TU Darmstadt)

• Melnyk J.P., Smith A., Scott-Dupree C., Marcone M.F., Hill A. 2010, Identification of cheese mite species inoculated on Mimolette and Milbenkase cheese through cryogenic scanning electron microscopy, Journal of Dairy Science 93:3461–3468, doi:10.3168/jds.2009-2937
• Shimano S., Hiruta S.F., Shimizu N., Hagino W., Aoki J.I., OConnor B.M. 2022, Do 'cheese factory-specific' mites (Acari, Astigmata) exist in the cheese-ripening cabinet?, Experimental and Applied Acarology 87:49–65, doi:10.1007/s10493-022-00725-8
• Brückner A., Heethoff M. 2016, Scent of a mite, origin and chemical characterization of the lemon-like flavor of mite-ripened cheeses, Experimental and Applied Acarology 69:249–261, doi:10.1007/s10493-016-0040-7
• Wikipedia (German), Würchwitzer Milbenkäse
• TU Darmstadt, press release 26 April 2016, Ökologen der TU Darmstadt entlocken Milbenkäse das Aroma-Geheimnis

Salterello is a cheese of Friuli that food scientists list with Abruzzo's marcetto and Emilia-Romagna's furmai nis as products similar to Sardinia's casu marzu, a cheese colonised by larvae of the cheese fly Piophila casei during ripening.

1. Make and ripen the base cheese
2. Let the cheese fly lay its eggs
3. Larvae soften the paste

Safety: Cheese-fly larvae in cheese have been blamed for rhinomyiasis and for gastrointestinal and urogenital myiasis in people, mostly where hygiene is very poor. Some authors also say the fly can carry Clostridium botulinum spores (Mazzette 2010). That paper studies casu marzu, not salterello. It concludes that casu marzu should, as a precaution, go only to immunocompetent adults.

• Mazzette R., Colleo M.M., Riu G., Piras G., Piras F., Addis M., Pes M., Pirisi A., Meloni D., Mureddu A., Spada S., Fiori M., Coinu M., Lentini A. 2010, Produzione di "casu marzu" in condizioni controllate, A.I.V.I. proceedings, Italian Journal of Food Safety n. 7, p. 45