Out of This World Cheese and Jam Pairings

Cheeseboard with jams photo credit Rasmus Gundorff Saederup

Cheese and jam are probably one of the most classic cheese pairings in the market. There’s something about the saltiness/nuttiness of the cheese that contrasts so well with the sweetness of jams and jellies. There’s the classic pairing of Spanish Manchego cheese and the quince paste or membrillo. Fig jam or cherry jam are also great all-purpose jams to pair with cheeses.

Recently people across the food industry have been upping their jam and cheese pairing game by bringing together wonderfully unexpected and complex flavors (including jam adjacent spreads like jellies and mostarda.

Blake Hill Jams for Cheese photo courtesy of Blake Hill Preserves

One creamery, Vermont-based Jasper Hill Farm, has partnered with Vermont-based Blake Hill Preserves to make bespoke jams for five Jasper Hill’s cheeses. The labels on the jam jars even name the type of cheese that you should use with the jam.

Here are several recommendations including Jasper Hills bespoke jams and cheese on how to intensify your jam and cheese platter.

Marmalades

Executive Chef Magnus Young at Clif Family Winery recommends pairing a fresh cheese with the Clif Family’s Organic Meyer Lemon Marmalade, made from lemons at Clif Family Farm. He says, “It just has a really nice citrusy aroma and balanced sweetness with a subtle acidity that just really helps to compliment fresher style cheeses,” like ricotta, mozzarella, or burrata. The Lemon Marmalade also works well with brie-style cheeses, like the California-based Cowgirl Creamery’s triple creme Mt. Tam.

Kellie Freemire, General Manager, Certified Cheese Professional at Chicago’s Beautiful Rind notes that sheep milk cheese like Minnesota-based creamery Shepherds Way Farms’ Sogn, an all sheep milk tomme, goes well with orange or lemon marmalade, especially in the summer. She explains that they amplify one another.

Blake Hill Orange Single Malt with Jasper Hill Cheeseboard photo courtesy of Blake Hill Preserves

Zoe Brickley, director of Communications at Jasper Hill Farm, explains that they’ve paired their Cabot Clothbound Cheddar with Orange Marmalade with Ten Year Single Malt jam. She explains that hard cheeses tend not to have notes of bitterness and have sweeter aromas. “That's a cool place to bring in elements of bitterness that can still play nice and harmonize,” Brickley says. “The peaty notes from the Scotch do really interesting things with the earthy notes in the cheese,” she explains, “the combo is kinda magical. One plus one equals three.”

Wine Jellies

Wine jellies, made from cooking wine with pectin and sugar, are becoming a popular choice for cheese pairings. Clif Family Winery recently released three wine jellies to “help us to create a bridge between different cheeses,” Young explains, “that wouldn’t normally work with a specific wine style.” For instance, most people would not pair a blue cheese with a white wine, unless it was a very mild blue. But adding the white wine jelly, made with Clif Family Sauvignon Blanc wine, to a blue cheese really works. He suggests pairing it with California based Point Reyes Creamery Original Blue or Bay Blue.

Another wine jelly combination includes a nice, sharp, mature cheddar with the Clif Family Red Wine Jelly and cracked pepper. The Cheddar's boldness will pair well with the red wine. He also said that sheep-milk cheeses, such as the nutty flavor of, an Alpine sheep-milk cheese, work well with the red wine jelly. With their Rosé wine jelly, they recommend goat cheese.

For another wine jelly and cheese pairing, Forever Cheese’s Lambrusco Wine Jelly Casa Forcello is another option. Lambrusco is an Italian sparkling red wine. Forever Cheese Marketing Manager Chelsea Bryant recommends pairing the wine jelly with young cheeses like Miticaña de Oveja or fresh sheep’s milk cheese like Wooly Wooly®.

Bryant also notes that the wine jelly can also work with another classic Italian cheese: Parmesan cheese: “The Parmigiano pairing works so well because parm is delicious with a glass of Lambrusco. This pairing works because it has contrasting flavors — the jelly basically distills all the fruitiness of a glass of the wine and that is a wonderful contrast with the umami notes of the cheese, as well as the crunchy tyrosine crystals.”

Berry-Based and Stone-Fruit Jams

Berry and stone-fruit based jams are popular with bloomy rinds and washed rinds. Another bespoke pairing at Jasper Hills includes its Harbison, a bloomy rind wrapped in bark, and the Raspberry Mostarda with Vermont Ice Cider. Mostarda is a sort of jelly-like mixture of sweetened fruit and mustard oil. Brickley says, “the sweet berry notes can round the edges” of robust and ripe cheeses. There’s a natural bitterness to bloomy rinds, so they avoid pairing it with a marmalade since that would enhance the bitterness.

For washed rind cheeses like Jasper Hill’s Willoughby or Winnimere cheeses, Brickley notes that the cheeses tend to have notes of peaches and cream. So, they like to pair them with apricots/peaches, like the Apricots and Orange with Pure Clover Honey jam. She recommends pairing it with an orange wine since the cheese and wine will work with the orange rind and the apricot notes.

Country Castle Limburger with Strawberry Jam

Jamie Fahrney at Chalet Cheese Cooperative recommends strawberry jam with their Country Castle Limburger. The sweetness of the jam helps cut the funk of the cheese. Grape jelly is also another option too.

For blue cheeses, Jasper Hill recommends pairing the cheese with plum-based jam. Their co-branded pairing includes the Bayley Hazen Blue with Spiced Plums with Port & Anise jam. She says that most people may not associate blue cheese and anise, but once you add it in with the jam, you can pick it out of the noise of the rest of the aromas of the cheese.

Savory Jam

Not all jams have to be sweet. Jasper Hill Farms pairs its alpine cheeses, like Alpha Tolman, with onion jam. Brickley explains that there are notes of toasted nuts and caramelized onions in the cheese. Add the onion jam and “It tastes like French onion soup in a spreadable format,” Brickley says.

Tropical Fruit Jam

When asked about usual pairings, cheesemonger Freemire noted that Beautiful Rind brought together kiwi mango jam with Cheddar. “Neither of which fruit I automatically think to go with any kind of cheese, but we found that jam worked with a Cheddar,” she noted. Another uncommon combination was Pineapple Aleppo pepper jam with a mild buttery earthy cheese like Sequatchie Cove Creamery’s Cumberland, which is an Alpine-style cheese.

General Pairing Recommendations

Clif Family Enoteca with Executive Chef Magnus Young photo courtesy of Clif Family Winery

For folks who want to experiment with cheeses and jams, Chef Magnus Young suggests that people may want to start with a milder cheese with a sweeter jam or preserve. But with bolder cheeses, you can try something more complex without overpowering it. With any pairing, he suggests using a small amount of jam or jelly with the cheese; you can always add more if the pairing works for you.

Brickley recommends thinking about the acidity and sweetness levels of the cheese and jam. She said, “I've heard that when you're pairing a beverage with a cheese, it's nice if the beverage is a little bit more acidic than the cheese, and I think that holds true for jams too. If you have a nice, bright, tangy one, it's nice to keep that brightness a little bit out ahead of the cheese, and it has kind of a refreshing effect.”

Brickley also thinks that the intensity of taste between the cheese and jam should be matched: “you shouldn't be able to quite say who's won the battle in your mouth, and that's just fine of a really well-matched pairing.” In addition to the intensity, think about the aromatic affinity of the cheese and see what it may match. Brickley noted that Cheddars tend to have pineapple notes so it might be a fun pairing to include a pineapple preserve or even tinned pineapple.

Freemire recommends that people should just experiment with cheese and jams and find what works for them. Both Brickley and Freemire agree about thinking about textures and the cheese. Freemire noted that not all textures of jam go with all cheeses. Brickley likes to have contrasting textures, like pairing a creamy cheese with a preserve that contains chunks of fruit or seeds in it.

Ultimately, Brickley says that jam and cheese pairings are “a gateway to bring people into the complex flavors of cheese, because it's really easy to grasp. There's a lot of variation and a lot of regional differences.” It’s also a great way to slow down and appreciate all the flavors.