''Petit-suisse'' (meaning "little Swiss cheese") is a French

cheese Cheese is a dairy product produced in wide ranges of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. During productio ...

from the

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

region.

Production and use

''Petit-suisse'' is a '' fromage frais'', an unripened, unsalted, smooth, and creamy cheese with a texture closer to a very thick yogurt than a typical cheese. It is made from cow's

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digest solid food. Immune factors and immune-modulat ...

enriched with

cream Cream is a dairy product composed of the higher-fat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization. In un-homogenized milk, the fat, which is less dense, eventually rises to the top. In the industrial production of cream, this process ...

so that its dry solids contain about 40% fat content (around 10% in the actual product eaten). The cheese is then smoothed and drained in a

centrifuge A centrifuge is a device that uses centrifugal force to separate various components of a fluid. This is achieved by spinning the fluid at high speed within a container, thereby separating fluids of different densities (e.g. cream from milk) or ...

. A typical cheese weighs 30 or 60 grams and is packaged in a cylinder around 4 cm high and 3 cm diameter or 5 cm by 4 cm in the larger size. ''Petit-suisse'' may be consumed with sugar, as a dessert either on its own or with jam or honey, or salted and peppered with herbs. It is also used in meat stuffings. A mixture of ''petit-suisse'' and mustard is sometimes applied to rabbit to prevent the meat from drying during cooking.

History and development

Contrary to what its name suggests, ''petit-suisse'' did not originate in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, but in Normandy, where in the 1850s, a Swiss employee at a dairy in Auvilliers (

) suggested adding cream to enrich the curd used for cheese. Originally, it was sold in a thin paper wrapping and packaged in wooden boxes, six to a box. The cheeses weighed 60 grams each and were called simply ''"suisse"'' (Swiss). Today, they are made throughout France. Though the 60-g version is often seen labelled ''petit suisse'', the term is sometimes reserved for the 30-g ones, the larger ones then being referred to as a ''double petit-suisse'', ''double suisse'', or ''suisse double''.

References

External links

Fromages de Normandie
Norman cuisine French cheeses Cow's-milk cheeses {{cheese-stub