Beaumont is a mild cow's milk cheese from Haute-Savoie, created in 1881 by Jérémie Girod at Saint-Julien-en-Genevois and still made in the Faucigny and Genevois valleys.
The version almost everyone buys is a flat disc about 20cm across and 1.5kg in weight, with a pale washed rind and a gentle, creamy paste.
There is also a second cheese sold under the same name that weighs 50kg. Knowing which one a shop means is the first practical problem this cheese sets you.
In This Article
What Is Beaumont Cheese?
A pressed, uncooked cow's milk cheese with a washed rind, made from pasteurised milk and matured for six weeks to two months.
The standard disc measures about 20cm across and 4 to 5cm thick, and weighs around 1.5kg. That flat proportion is the family signature it shares with the other Savoie tommes.
The rind is washed but pale, a light straw yellow rather than the orange of a heavily washed cheese. It is brushed and turned in cool humid cellars rather than scrubbed hard.
The paste is ivory, supple and slightly elastic, with only a few tiny openings. Androuet describes the cheese as having no particular aroma, which is unusual enough to be worth saying out loud.
Jérémie Girod created it in 1881, so this is a named nineteenth-century invention rather than an old peasant cheese with a murky origin. It has no AOP.
Why Are There Two Cheeses Called Beaumont?
Because a second, much larger cheese is sold under the Beaumont de Savoie designation, and it is not a bigger version of the first one.
It is made from raw milk instead of pasteurised, its curd is cooked instead of uncooked, and it matures for at least five months in the cellars at Minzier rather than six weeks.
| Beaumont | Beaumont de Savoie | |
|---|---|---|
| Milk | Pasteurised cow | Raw whole cow |
| Curd | Pressed, uncooked | Pressed and cooked |
| Weight | About 1.5kg | About 50kg |
| Size | 20cm across, 4 to 5cm thick | 55 to 65cm across, 16 to 19cm high |
| Rind | Washed, pale straw yellow | Natural and brushed, rustic |
| Aging | Six weeks to two months | At least five months at Minzier |
| Eating | Mild, creamy, almost no aroma | Firm, fruity, a wide aromatic range |
A cooked curd is what makes the big wheel possible. Heating the curd expels more water, which is the only way a cheese survives five months at that size without splitting or drying to dust.
If the label says only Beaumont, expect the 1.5kg pasteurised disc. Beaumont de Savoie on the label, or a wedge with a rough brushed rind and a firm fruity paste, means the large raw-milk wheel instead.
The two are not interchangeable on a plate. One is a quiet everyday cheese and the other is a mountain wheel in the Abondance and Beaufort tradition.
What Does Beaumont Taste Like?
Mildness is usually described as an absence, which is unfair to a cheese built for it deliberately. This one is gentle to the point of being shy, with a creamy sweetness and no sharp edge anywhere.
The washed rind is where what flavour there is comes from, and even that stays polite rather than pungent.
Six weeks is short for a washed rind, and it shows: the paste stays supple and the surface bacteria never get far enough in to build the meaty note a longer wash produces.
French descriptions settle on doux, meaning soft or mild, and Androuet goes further by recording no special aroma at all. For a washed-rind cheese that is genuinely unusual.
The texture carries more of the experience than the flavour does. It is supple and faintly elastic, the kind of paste that yields under a knife rather than crumbling or running.
The large Beaumont de Savoie is a different eating experience entirely. Five months and a cooked curd give it a firm paste and a fruity, layered flavour the small disc never develops.
Where Does Beaumont Sit Among Savoie Cheeses?
Savoie has a small number of cheeses everyone has heard of and a larger number that fill the everyday gap underneath them. This one sits in the second group, and that is exactly its use.
Savoie is crowded with cheeses that get more attention. Reblochon and Abondance both carry AOP status and both have stronger personalities, and Le Guide du Fromage says plainly that Beaumont is less well known than either.
What Beaumont offers instead is a mild pressed cheese that does not fight anything on the plate. On a regional board it is the one you put beside a strong cheese so the board has somewhere quiet to land.
It sits close to Tomme de Savoie in format and family, though the tomme has a thick grey natural rind and more earthiness where Beaumont keeps a washed rind and stays smooth.
The large version reaches in the other direction, toward Beaufort and Abondance, without the protected name either of those carries.
Who Makes Beaumont Now?
A cheese with no protected designation has no register of who is allowed to make it, and that shapes what you can find out about a wedge. Savoie dairies make it rather than a single named producer.
The practical effect is that two Beaumonts from two dairies are not obliged to be the same cheese.
An AOP would fix the milk, the area and the make; without one, the name describes a style and a region and stops there.
Pochat et Fils, a long-established Haute-Savoie house, lists Beaumont de Savoie in its current range, so the large raw-milk wheel is still in production rather than a historical footnote.
Without a protected name there is no register of who may make it and no inspection behind the label. That is not a warning so much as an explanation of why the cheese is hard to find and why two wedges can differ.
Outside France you will mostly not find it at all. This is a cheese to buy in Savoie, from a French cheese counter, or from an importer who deals directly with Alpine producers.
What Should You Look For on a Beaumont Wedge?
With no designation behind the name, the cheese itself has to be the evidence, and it is readable if you know what to look at. The rind and the cut face carry the whole story.
The rind should be a smooth pale orange-pink and slightly tacky rather than wet, sticky or cracked.
A dry cracked rind means the wheel has been sitting; a genuinely wet one means it has been wrapped badly.
A good rind is pale straw, faintly moist and evenly coloured. Grey patches, a dried papery edge or a rind that has darkened toward brown all mean the wedge has been cut and sitting.
The cut face should be smooth and evenly ivory right up to the rind. A dry, waxy, translucent band at the edge means the surface has been exposed for days.
Wrap the cut face in paper rather than plastic film when you get it home, and eat it inside a week. A mild cheese has nothing strong to hide behind once it starts drying.
How Do You Cook With Beaumont?
A cheese this mild is easy to write off on a board and easy to underrate in a pan, and the pan is where it earns its place. Melt it, because a mild pressed cheese with this much give is far more useful hot than cold.
The reason it melts well is the same reason it tastes quiet. A young paste with plenty of moisture and no sharp acidity flows smoothly instead of splitting.
Keep the heat moderate. A washed-rind cheese this young will go oily if you push it hard, and there is no strong flavour to survive the damage.
Androuet points it at croûtes au fromage, the Savoyard dish of thick country bread soaked in white wine or stock and baked under a blanket of melted cheese. That is the local answer and it suits the cheese exactly.
- Cut thick slices of stale country bread and lay them in a shallow dish
- Soak them with dry Savoie white wine, or stock if you would rather not use wine
- Cover completely with sliced Beaumont, rind trimmed off the edges
- Bake hot until the cheese has melted flat and browned in patches
- Eat it straight from the dish, with something sharp on the side
It also works anywhere you would use a mild melting cheese, in a gratin or a toasted sandwich. What it will not do is carry a dish on flavour alone.
Crépy and Roussette Are the Local Pours
Savoie makes the wines this cheese was raised alongside, and they work for a reason rather than by tradition alone.
Both are light, dry and high in acid, which is what a soft mild washed-rind cheese needs beside it.
Acid cuts through fat and resets the palate between bites, and a mild cheese has nothing to lose by that where a strong one might.
Anything heavy, oaked or tannic will simply erase it, which is the one pairing mistake worth avoiding here.
Androuet names Crépy and Roussette, both dry Savoie whites with high acidity and low weight. Against a creamy, low-aroma cheese, acidity is the only thing that needs supplying.
Skip big reds entirely. There is nothing in this cheese for a tannic wine to meet, and the wine simply takes over.
If you are drinking beer, keep it pale and dry for the same reason.
What Can You Use Instead of Beaumont?
Substituting here is easier than for most cheeses, because what you are replacing is a texture and a temperature rather than a flavour. Any mild pressed cheese from the same corner of the Alps will do the melting job.
Tomme de Savoie is the closest by shape and region, though it brings a more rustic earthy note from its natural rind. Reblochon is creamier and stronger, and it will dominate a dish where Beaumont would have stayed in the background.
Outside Savoie, a young raclette is the practical supermarket answer. It is bred for exactly this kind of melting and it is mild enough not to change a recipe.
For the large Beaumont de Savoie, the substitution list is different. There you want Abondance or Beaufort, because you are replacing a cooked-curd mountain wheel rather than a soft everyday disc.
Because the milk is raw, anyone pregnant or immunocompromised should follow raw-milk cheese guidance before eating it, whatever the maturation length.
SOURCES & REFERENCES
Beaumont Cheese FAQ
Two more label questions worth settling before you buy.
No. It is a named cheese with a known inventor and a defined production area, but it carries no protected designation, unlike Reblochon, Abondance and Beaufort.
The pale washed rind on the small disc is edible and mild, though many people trim it when melting the cheese so it blankets evenly. The brushed natural rind on the large wheel is usually cut away.
