Semi-soft Cow’s milk The house cheese

Havarti

also called Cream Havarti

The buttery Danish table cheese that gave this catalogue its name.

Drawn by the app from this cheese’s own record — paste, rind and texture come from the data, not a stock library.

Hanne Nielsen spent the 1850s touring European dairies and came home to her farm, Havarthigaard, north of Copenhagen with the technique that became this cheese. It is washed-curd: some of the whey is drawn off and replaced with water, which rinses out lactose, keeps the acidity low and leaves the paste sweet, springy and full of the small irregular eyes you can see in cross-section.

Young Havarti is the friendliest cheese on any board — buttery, faintly sweet, almost no bite. Left to age past six months it firms up, dries slightly at the edge and develops a hazelnut sharpness that surprises people who only know the supermarket block. It melts without splitting, which is why it turns up in so many sandwiches.

Tastes of

butter cream hazelnut faint sweetness a clean acidic finish

Put it next to

Riesling Danish rye bread Pilsner Thin-sliced radish Apricot preserve