Cheeses that look and sound alike. What actually separates them, and which one to buy — paired up.
There is a reason so many cheeses resemble each other
Cheese is what happens when a lot of people solve the same problem separately. Keeping milk was the universal difficulty, and the available tools were much the same everywhere, so neighbouring valleys frequently produced nearly identical cheeses under different names. The differences that remain are usually very concrete: the size of the wheel, the months of ageing, whether cream was added, which animal gave the milk. Check those four and things that looked interchangeable separate cleanly.
Brie and camembert — size and strength
Both are French cheeses under a bloomy white rind, but they are made at different sizes — brie as a large wheel sold in wedges, camembert as a small disc sold whole. That size difference is what splits the flavour: brie is the richer one, camembert the stronger.
Set them side by side and start with the size:
Parmigiano and grana padano — the older and younger sibling
They look alike and get used the same way, but the rules differ: parmigiano needs twelve months to earn its stamp where grana padano needs nine, and the feed rules are stricter for parmigiano. So parmigiano costs more and tastes deeper.
Two to weigh price against use:
Mozzarella and burrata — what is inside
Burrata is a pouch of mozzarella filled with torn mozzarella and fresh cream. The outside is the same and the inside is not, which is why it spills when cut — and why it has to be handled quite differently.
Same outside, different inside:
Ricotta and cottage cheese — both white and crumbly
They start from different places. Ricotta is made from the whey left after other cheese, reheated to catch the protein in it; cottage cheese is made by setting milk itself. So ricotta's curds are fine and smooth, while cottage cheese has coarse curds with liquid moving between them.
Two that start from different places:
Curds and cottage cheese — a curd is not a cheese name
A curd is simply milk drawn together into lumps, so it is not the name of any cheese but the stage nearly every cheese passes through. Two products are nonetheless sold under that word: squeaky American cheese curds and soft British curd cheese, which are not the same thing.
The one of them with a card here:
Cream cheese and mascarpone — which is richer
Both are white and spreadable, but not alike. Cream cheese is milk and cream fermented with lactic cultures, so it carries a tang. Mascarpone is cream set with acid, with almost no fermented character and considerably more fat. Hence cream cheese on a bagel and mascarpone in tiramisu. Swap them and you get a tiramisu that tastes sour and a bagel that tastes cloying. Neither is inedible, but neither is the dish you meant to make.
Swap these two and you will notice:
Feta and chèvre — two white crumbly cheeses
They look similar and start from different milks. Feta is mostly sheep's milk sold in brine; chèvre is goat's milk, usually sold as a log. The flavours diverge too: feta leads with salt, chèvre with bright acidity and its own distinctive aroma. So does their use — feta arrives pre-seasoned and goes straight into a salad, while chèvre comes alive next to roast vegetables or honey. For a first purchase, feta is by far the easier of the two.
Two that differ from the milk up:
Gruyère, emmental and comté — the Alpine siblings
All three are made large in the mountains and aged long. Emmental has the big holes and the mildest flavour, gruyère is dense and deeply savoury, and comté is the softest-natured with a caramel sweetness behind it.
Price tends to climb in this order too:
Gouda and edam — how much fat came out
Both are Dutch semi-hard cheeses and they look much alike on the counter, but they part company at the milk. Gouda is made from whole milk, edam from milk with some of the fat skimmed off. The 48+ and 40+ printed on Dutch labels record exactly that. Those numbers are not the fat in the cheese as you eat it, though — they measure fat in the dry matter, with the water discounted, so the real figure is considerably lower. Less fat means less moisture held, so edam is drier and firmer, slices thinly and cleanly, and lets its salt come forward. Gouda is the moist creamy one, and it flows when melted; edam melts too, but it will not flow as smoothly. Buy edam for slicing into sandwiches, gouda for eating in pieces or melting.
The one of the pair with a card in this guide:
Gouda and havarti — both have washed curd
Denmark's havarti gets confused with gouda just as often, and for a clear reason: both have their curd rinsed with warm water to carry off lactose, which leaves both mild and faintly sweet. Havarti is the softer of the two, scattered with eyes the size of a rice grain, and it does not travel towards caramel with age the way gouda does.
Both of the pair are in this guide now:
How to read edam's red wax ball
The shapes differ first. Edam is made as a sphere with flattened ends, gouda as a flat wheel. The wax colour carries information too. Red is the coating used on cheese sent for export, while edam aged beyond about seventeen weeks gets black wax instead — drier, saltier, stronger in aroma. The naming situation is the same as gouda's. The word edam is not protected and may be used anywhere in the world; what is locked down are the longer names, Edam Holland, registered as a protected geographical indication in 2010, and Noord-Hollandse Edammer, a protected designation of origin since 1996. The name comes from the port town of Edam north of Amsterdam, and the cheese genuinely went out into the world through that harbour: firm and slow to spoil, it survived long voyages better than most.
The cheese this section is about:
Three blues, and how they differ
The Italian one is cow's milk, creamy and comparatively gentle — the version labelled dolce is soft enough to eat with a spoon. The English one is also cow's milk but crumbly, deeper in aroma and clearly salty. The French one is sheep's milk aged in limestone caves, and it is the saltiest and strongest of the three. Start Italian, move through English, arrive at French. Reverse that order and there is a fair chance you conclude that blue cheese is simply not for you.
Listed from the mildest upward: