Welcome back to the cheese corner, where we will be feasting on one of the world’s most iconic cheeses: The Netherlands’ Gouda.

Since the gouda I had was smoked, its taste varied slightly from standard gouda, but it still retained most of the nutty flavor. With its smooth creamy texture, which becomes crumbly with age, and distinctly nutty and tangy taste and aftertaste that increases with age, gouda makes a fantastic addition to any dinner or cheese tray as a strong supplement or the main highlight.

I haven’t even mentioned gouda’s signature red exterior rind, from the wax coating. While originally used to distinguish and identify cheese as being gouda cheese, the red coating (which can be black in aged gouda) provides a layer of protection to the interior cheese, which itself ranges from white to yellow in color.

Gouda’s story can be traced deep into Dutch history to the city of Gouda, then part of the Holy Roman Empire’s County of Holland in the 1200s. Gouda (the city) was an important trading hub. Since Dutch cities had the feudal right to fully control the trade of any one product, Gouda chose cheese, allowing it to build up a significant monopoly on cheese markets.  

While it remains uncertain if Gouda the cheese was actually from the city or was just popularized there from trade, it was able to cement itself as one of the Netherlands’ — and the world’s — most famous cheeses as its modern iteration developed by the 1600s.

Gouda’s creation process includes adding cultures to milk so that it curdles, sweetening it by removing excess lactose, compressing it with molds, and soaking it in salt brine. Once removed from the brine, it gets its famous wax and is allowed to age, creating a cheese that can vary from sweeter to nuttier/tangier and from smoother to crumblier.

With its diverse flavors and unique appearance, it’s not hard to figure out what makes gouda cheese so famous, but if I had to pinpoint one thing it does best, it’d be how through so many different ages, tastes, meals, and even colors, gouda is able to remain consistently delicious.