• A. Gouda cheese
  • B. Edam
  • C. Leiden cheese
  • D. Maasdam

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Think of the cheese variety that is worldwide best known as a typical Dutch cheese. The name comes from a city with a historic cheese market that has existed for centuries.

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The correct answer is A. Gouda cheese.

Here comes a surprising twist: Gouda cheese doesn’t have to be made in Gouda at all. The name simply comes from the cheese market that has been held there since the Middle Ages. Farmers from all over South Holland and Utrecht brought their cheese to Gouda to sell, and that’s how this cheese variety got its name. So it’s about the trading place, not the production location.

Edam is recognizable by its red wax coating and comes from the area around Edam in North Holland. Leiden cheese is full of cumin seeds and has its origins in the Leiden region. Maasdam with its characteristic large holes is actually quite new – it was only developed in the 1980s.

📚 More background information

The cheese market in Gouda has existed since 1395. That’s really old – we’re talking about the time of knights and mayors in long robes. Nowadays, you can still visit a tourist cheese market there every Thursday morning in summer, complete with cheese carriers in traditional costume demonstrating the traditional “handjeklap” (hand clap). That hand clap was the way traders used to agree on a price – by literally slapping each other’s hands. Pretty charming, actually.

What many people don’t know: Gouda cheese has no protected designation of origin. This means anyone anywhere in the world can make cheese and simply call it ‘Gouda’. That’s very different from, for example, Parmigiano Reggiano or Roquefort, which have strict regulations. The result? More ‘Gouda’ is made worldwide outside the Netherlands than within our borders. Pretty strange when you think about it.

Dutch cheesemakers use a whole scale of aging times. Young is four weeks, semi-matured about eight to ten weeks, matured sixteen to eighteen weeks, extra matured seven to eight months, old ten to twelve months, and overaged is anything over a year. The longer the cheese ages, the sharper and more crumbly it becomes. Personally, I find aged cheese the tastiest, with those little crystals in it.

That typical yellow color? It comes from carotene in the grass that cows eat. In winter, when cows are fed hay, the cheese naturally becomes whiter. In the past, this was a problem for cheesemakers who wanted customers who expected the same color all year round. That’s why they added annatto – a natural colorant from the achiote tree. This way they could deliver yellow cheese all year round.

The Netherlands is a real cheese-exporting nation. According to statistics from 2024, we exported approximately 750 million kilos of cheese per year, the majority of which was Gouda cheese (these figures may have changed since). Germany buys by far the most, followed by Belgium and France. The total Dutch cheese production at that time had an estimated value of more than 3.5 billion euros per year.

Traditional Gouda farmhouse cheese is still made with raw milk, straight from the cow. You can recognize these artisanal cheeses by the ‘Boerenkaas’ (Farmhouse Cheese) quality mark. They taste genuinely different from factory cheese – much more complex – due to the natural bacteria present in raw milk. Modern factory cheese uses pasteurized milk, mainly for food safety and longer shelf life. Both have their place, but if you get the chance to taste real farmhouse cheese, definitely do it.