All Types of Cheese

How Many Types of Cheese Are There?

There are more than 1,800 named types of cheese in the world, and estimates pass 2,000 once regional variations are counted. Nobody keeps an official register. AnyCheese documents 996 of them from 90 countries, each on its own page with origin, milk, texture, flavor and the products you can actually buy.

Cheesemakers and food scientists sort that long list by texture and moisture content, because those two things predict how a cheese tastes, melts and keeps better than anything else. That is the system used below.

The 7 Main Types of Cheese at a Glance

Use this chart to place any cheese. Moisture and aging move together: fresh cheese sits at one end with the most water and no aging, hard cheese at the other with the least water and the longest time in the cave.

Fresh cheese is unaged cheese eaten within days of being made, with high moisture and a mild, milky, slightly tangy flavor.

Fresh cheeses are the simplest to make and the closest to milk. Curd is set with acid or a little rennet, drained, sometimes lightly salted, and sold within days. Because nothing has had time to break down, the flavor is clean and lactic rather than complex, and the texture runs from spoonable ricotta to squeaky curds to crumbly feta.

They spoil fastest of any cheese and rarely melt into a smooth sauce, but they are the backbone of pizza, lasagna, salads and cheesecake. Cream cheese, cottage cheese, paneer, queso fresco and burrata all belong here. Looking for the salty, crumbly kind specifically? Browse all crumbly cheeses.

Mozzarella

Quark

Paneer

Halloumi

Mascarpone

Feta

Soft-ripened cheese is aged briefly under a bloomy white rind that ripens the paste from the outside in until it turns creamy and rich.

Soft-ripened cheeses start out much like fresh cheese but are then inoculated with a white mold, usually Penicillium camemberti, and left for a few weeks. The mold forms the velvety rind and releases enzymes that ripen the paste from the outside in, so a young wheel has a chalky core and a fully ripe one is soft all the way through.

Serve them at room temperature, when the paste is at its creamiest. They bake beautifully whole, and their mushroomy, buttery flavor suits fruit, honey and crusty bread more than cooking. Brie and Camembert are the famous ones, and triple-creams like Brillat-Savarin push the richness even further.

Brie

Camembert

Taleggio

Blue

Mascarpone

Stracchino

See all 18 soft-ripened cheeses →

Semi-soft cheese is pliable and smooth, aged a few weeks to a few months, and includes both mild table cheeses and pungent washed-rind styles.

Semi-soft cheeses are pressed lightly and aged for weeks to a few months, which leaves them supple and smooth without ever getting crumbly. This group is broad. At the mild end sit Havarti, young Monterey Jack and Muenster, the great melting cheeses for sandwiches and quesadillas.

At the other end are the washed-rind cheeses. Their surfaces are rubbed with brine, beer or wine during aging, which encourages orange bacteria that give Taleggio, Limburger and Epoisses their sticky rinds and pungent, meaty aroma. The paste underneath is usually far gentler than the smell suggests.

Havarti

Muenster

Queijo de Azeitão

Oka

Stichelton

Semi-hard cheese is firm but still yielding, pressed to remove whey and aged for months, which gives it the widest range of everyday flavors.

Semi-hard cheeses are the everyday workhorses: Cheddar, Gouda, Edam, Emmental, Gruyere, Manchego, Provolone and Colby. The curd is cut small, heated, pressed firmly to drive off whey, then aged anywhere from a few months to a year and a half. They slice cleanly, grate well and melt smoothly, so they do most of the work in the kitchen.

Flavor tracks age closely. A three-month Gouda is sweet and buttery, while an eighteen-month Gouda is nutty and studded with crunchy tyrosine crystals. Mild Cheddar is pliable, and extra sharp Cheddar turns crumbly and tangy. Many cheeses in this group cross into the hard category once they are aged long enough.

Provolone

Gouda

Cheddar

Abondance

Asiago

Stelvio

See all 10 semi-hard cheeses →

Hard cheese is pressed hard and aged for a year or more, driving out moisture until the paste turns dense, granular and intensely savory.

Hard cheeses, often just called aged cheeses, are pressed hard, salted heavily and matured for a year or longer, often two or three. So much moisture leaves that the paste turns dense and granular, and proteins break down into savory amino acids, including the glutamate that makes Parmigiano-Reggiano taste so deeply of umami. Many develop crunchy white crystals, a sign of long aging rather than a flaw.

Because the flavor is concentrated, a little goes a long way. Grate them over pasta and risotto, shave them onto salads or serve them in shards with honey and nuts. Parmigiano-Reggiano, Grana Padano, Pecorino Romano, aged Gouda, Comte, Mimolette and Sbrinz are the classic examples on any aged cheese list. They also keep for months in the fridge.

Appenzeller

Canadian Cheddar

Asiago

Tolminc

Batzos

Blue cheese is any cheese ripened with Penicillium cultures that grow blue-green veins through the paste and give it a sharp, salty, peppery bite.

Blue cheeses are inoculated with Penicillium roqueforti or Penicillium glaucum and then pierced with needles so oxygen reaches the interior and the mold grows into blue-green veins. The mold breaks down fat and protein aggressively, which is why blues are so much sharper and saltier than other cheeses of the same age.

Texture varies with the base cheese. Roquefort, made from sheep's milk, is moist and crumbly. Stilton is firm and buttery. Gorgonzola Dolce is nearly spreadable. Blue cheese pairs with sweet things that stand up to it: pears, figs, honey, port and dessert wine. It also makes the best salad dressing and the classic topping for a steak.

Blue

Roquefort

Stilton

Gorgonzola

Fourme d'Ambert

Bleu d'Auvergne

Processed cheese is natural cheese melted with emulsifying salts and reshaped so that it stays smooth, mild and meltable for a long shelf life.

Processed cheese is made by grinding natural cheese, usually young Cheddar or Colby, then heating it with emulsifying salts such as sodium citrate until it forms a smooth mass that can be poured into slices, blocks or jars. The emulsifiers stop the fat from separating. That is the reason American cheese melts into a smooth sauce where a natural cheese would turn greasy or stringy.

It is mild, salty and long-lasting, and it exists for melting: burgers, grilled cheese, nachos and queso dip. Products labeled "pasteurized process cheese" are made from cheese plus a small amount of emulsifier. "Cheese food" only has to be 51 percent cheese, and "cheese product" can be less, so read the label if that matters to you.

Babybel

American

Types of Cheese by Milk

The animal matters as much as the method. Fat, protein and flavor compounds differ from one milk to the next, so the same recipe yields a different cheese depending on what went into the vat.

Cheese is local. Climate, grazing, breed and centuries of habit gave every region its own styles, and many of the famous names are protected so they can only be made in one place. These are the countries with the most cheese types on the site.

The cheese types visitors look up most on AnyCheese, updated hourly.

Mozzarella

Brie

Camembert

Taleggio

Provolone

Jarlsberg

Brunost

Parmigiano Reggiano

Maasdam

Paneer

Gouda

Blue

Not sure which of two similar cheeses to buy? These side-by-side pages cover taste, texture, milk, aging and when one can stand in for the other.

Every Cheese Type, A to Z

All 996 cheese types on AnyCheese in alphabetical order.