Building the Perfect Cheese Board: A Guide to Texture and Pairing

A great cheese board is built on contrast: soft against hard, mild against pungent, creamy against crumbly. Choose one representative from four flavour families -- fresh (burrata, chevre), aged hard (Comté, aged Gouda, Parmesan), washed rind (Epoisses, Limburger, Taleggio) and blue (Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Stilton) -- and you have covered enough ground to please a table of guests with very different palates. Three cheeses is minimum; five to seven is a relaxed abundance without overwhelming the board.

Temperature is the variable most home entertainers get wrong. Cheese served straight from the refrigerator is numbed -- the fat has solidified slightly, muting the volatile aromatic compounds that give aged cheeses their complexity. Remove cheese from the fridge at least 45 minutes before serving (one hour for a large, cold block of hard cheese in winter). A soft Brie should bulge gently when pressed at the sides; if it is firm like a hockey puck, it needs more time at room temperature. This single habit will improve the flavour of every cheese board you ever serve.

Condiments should contrast, not compete. Sweet (honey, fig jam, quince paste) against salty aged cheese; tart (cornichons, pickled onions) against rich washed rinds; bitter walnuts against mild creamy blues. Bread should be neutral: plain crackers for the strong cheeses, lightly toasted sourdough for the soft fresh ones. On wine, the old rule of matching regional cheese with regional wine still holds -- Burgundy with Epoisses, Sauternes with Roquefort, Alsatian Riesling with Munster. But ultimately, the best pairing is the one you actually have open on the night.