Mimolette

What is Mimolette Cheese?

Mimolette comes from the area around Lille in northern France, where it also goes by boule de Lille or vieux Hollande. Louis XIV asked for a French cheese to stand in for Edam, which was then very popular, as part of Jean-Baptiste Colbert's mercantilist policies. To keep it distinct from the Dutch cheese, makers first colored it with carrot juice and later seasoned it with annatto. The name Mimolette itself only appeared in the 20th century.

Farmers in the original region slowly gave the cheese up. It was revived elsewhere in France by three industrial cheesemakers: Lactalis in Bouvron, the Isigny-Sainte-Mère cooperative in Manche, and Savencia in Somme. The milk is now pasteurized. Some artisanal farm production came back in the 2010s.

A wheel is a sphere that looks like a cantaloupe melon and normally weighs about 2 kg (approximately 4.5 pounds). The bright orange color comes from annatto, which in these small amounts adds no taste or smell of its own. The name traces back to mi-mou, meaning semi-soft, a reference to the oily texture of a cheese that is otherwise hard. Cheese mites placed on the surface give aged wheels a grey rind and sharpen the flavor.

Young Mimolette tastes close to Parmesan. Many people like it best extra-old, or extra-vieille, when it can get rather hard to chew and the flesh takes on a hazelnut flavor. Charles de Gaulle was known to favor it.

In 2013 the Food and Drug Administration detained about a ton of the cheese and put further imports to the United States on hold. The agency said mite counts ran above six per cubic inch and could cause an allergic reaction if eaten in large quantities. The restriction was lifted in 2014.