Le Brillat-Savarin.
It is the case to say it: it is the cream of cheese!
Indeed, this triple-cream cheese — a double-cream cheese is a cheese whose fat content is equal to or greater than 60%, while a triple-cream cheese is a cheese whose fat content is equal to or greater than 75% — is a “good to die” sin with no possibility of withdrawal, for those who love cream.
We do not count when we love as you will have understood.
It would have been created around a table on the initiative of a group of cheese makers. At the time, there was already a cheese almost as pleasant, although a little less creamy: a double-cream called Excelsior, also born in the Bray region at the end of the 19th century (in fact the oldest of the double-cream soft cheeses). bloomy rind cream).
But, very crazy, in a kind of challenge, our gourmet gourmets wanted a cheese with EVEN more cream!
And big enough to satisfy the ferocious appetite of a table of colossi who love convivial meals.
Thus in 1930, based in the canton of Forges-les-Eaux, the manufacturer of Excelsior – a cheese that still exists – developed a soft cheese with a bloomy rind inspired by it, but enriched.
A convincing attempt that Pierre Androuët immediately baptized Brillat-Savarin, a sublime cheese in homage to the eponymous gourmet.
In the shape of a very thick disc 13 cm in diameter, weighing 500 g (twice its ancestor), its flavor is sweet on the palate, slightly acidulous, velvety, obviously creamy. To be honest, with enriched whole milk, it smells like fresh cream. And a short refining in a dry cellar – one to two weeks at most – gives its unctuous and matured paste an exquisite finesse and a certain nobility, in short, a taste of forbidden fruit.
Barely moldy, its rind is then bloomed with a delicate white down that adds to the delight.
If the ripening is prolonged - one to two weeks longer - the rind reddens and the paste takes on a marked fatty flavor - almost the sensation of sticking - which is more suitable for freedmen.
