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Updated August 2026
Sophisticated diners don’t indulge in sweet desserts on a daily basis. Instead, many finish the evening meal with cheese; perhaps with some fruit and/or bread, but often just with cheese, a knife and fork.
While we love all cheeses, a mild, creamy goat cheese is always a perfect choice for us.
The next time you’re near a cheese store or the cheese department of your market, pick up a crottin, a small goat cheese (often two inches in diameter) shaped like a drum (it’s the signature goat cheese shape of France’s Loire Valley).
Crottins are typically served as part of the salad course as a way to end the meal. With with a mesclun salad (mixed baby greens), lightly dressed in vinaigrette, a crottin can be divided between two people or eaten as a single portion.
Below:
> Crottins and mesclun salad, a French classic.
> Turn the crottin into “cheesecake.”
> More goat cheese recipes.
> The history of goat cheese.
Elsewhere on The Nibble:
> The history of cheese.
> The history of goats.
> 10 ways to use goat cheese.
> The different types of cheese: a photo glossary.
> The year’s 30 cheese holidays.
RECIPE: GOAT CHEESE CROTTINS & SALAD
Use whatever greens you have on hand. We prefer to serve goat cheese with with a Champagne, sherry or white vinegarette and good olive oil or an olive oil/nut oil mix (hazelnut oil and walnut oil are absolutely delicious). Other special salad mixes to serve with crottin or other goat cheese:
Arugula, sliced apple or pear and pistachio nuts
Baby spinach, orange segments and grape tomatoes
Endive, radicchio and toasted walnuts
There’s no need to serve bread or crackers with the cheese. But if you want to, consider raisin, raisin-walnut or semolina, lightly toasted.
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A fresh crottin drizzled with honey and topped with chopped walnuts. We’d like to
add some dried cherries! Photo courtesy Vermont Creamery.
Crottins are generous individual portions. If you just want a bite of cheese, split a crottin in two. Photo of aged crottin by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.
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TURN THE CROTTIN INTO “CHEESECAKE”
If you want more of a dessert, simply dress up the crottin. You can use individual crottins or slice a goat cheese log or round to create a dessert that’s essentially a deconstructed cheesecake.
Sauce. Drizzle honey, maple sugar or maple syrup over the top of the cheese. You can also use a fruit syrup, melted jelly or a dab of preserves,
Nuts. Sprinkle with chopped almonds walnuts, pecans or pistachios. Toasting the nuts adds a dimension of flavor (how to toast nuts).
Fruit. You can add a fruit element—dried blueberries or cherries, chopped apricots or dates, or a small dice of fresh strawberries, one blackberry or raspberry, melon or anything you have at hand.
Fresh herbs. Use ‘em if you’ve got ‘em: a rosemary plume, a chiffonade of basil or a scattering of anything minced to add color to the plate.
Bread. For an optional finishing touch, head to the bread group: graham crackers; toasted raisin, semolina or walnut bread; wheatmeal biscuits or other crackers. Almondina biscuits and biscotti also work for us. Assembling a lovely dish is often a function of looking through the fridge and cupboard to see what’s waiting for you.
MORE GOAT CHEESE RECIPES
Appetizers & Hors d’Oeuvres
Salads
Crostini & Small Plates
Pizza & Main Dishes
Decorated & Coated Logs
Desserts
DIY / How-To
THE HISTORY OF GOAT CHEESE
Goat cheese, known in French as chèvre, is one of the oldest manufactured foods in human history. Its story spans more than 9,000 years, from our nomadic hunter-gatherer days to settled agrarian societies.
Unlike cows, goats thrive in rocky, arid landscapes where grazing land is sparse—such as the Mediterranean, Middle East, and steep hillsides of central France.
Additionally, goat milk curds are softer and naturally smaller than cow milk curds due to lower levels of casein and smaller fat globules. This structural difference allowed ancient makers to easily drain whey without complex mechanical presses, producing the signature creamy texture characteristic of fresh chèvre.
Let’s start in the Fertile Crescent*.
Domestication Of Goats, ca. 8000–7000 B.C.E.
Domesticated goats. Goats were among the earliest animals domesticated for milk and meat in the Zagros Mountains (modern-day Iran and Iraq). Neolithic herdsmen discovered that milk stored in animal bladders or stomachs curdled into curds and whey (due to natural enzymes), preserving milk’s nutrients for long travel.
Greco-Roman Era: 800 B.C.E.-400 C.E.
Goat cheese became a staple across the Mediterranean basin. Homer mentions goat cheese in the Odyssey, and Roman agricultural writers like Columella detailed cheesemaking methods, including salting and pressing the curds. Roman legionnaires carried cured goat cheese as part of their field rations.
The Moorish Incursion & The Loire Valley: 732 C.E.
During the Saracen expansion into southern France, Moorish populations brought their specific goat-herding techniques and cheese recipes to the Loire Valley. After the Battle of Tours in 732 CE, many Moors settled in the region, along with their Arab goats (Alpine and Nubian ancestors). They created and shaped iconic French cheeses like Sainte-Maure de Touraine and Valençay.
Monastic Standardization, 1100–1600 C.E.
Medieval European monasteries refined cheese-making into a science. Monks documented aging conditions, rind development, and vegetable ash coating techniques (used to lower surface acidity and protect fresh cheese from flies).
Post French Revolution, 19th Century
As monastic estates declined in influence, especially at the end of the 18th century after the French Revolution (1789-1799), local farmers and village producers carried on production. Goat cheese became a practical farmstead product in places where goats thrived on land less suited to cattle. Regional styles emerged.
Over generations, particular local forms became established: the small drum of Crottin de Chavignol, the ash-coated log of Sainte-Maure de Touraine, the truncated pyramid of Valençay, leaf-wrapped Banon, and others. Far beyond monks’ standardized recipe, shape, rind treatment, draining method, aging, and local milk all became part of a cheese’s identity.
Cheeses moved from household consumption to village markets, urban shops, and regional trade. A cheese could become associated with a town or landscape because it was sold there regularly. Its commercial reputation created the value later protected by appellation rules (A.O.P regulations).
The Growth Of 19th Century Commerce
Better roads and railways expanded markets. At the same time, the growth of cities created demand for fresh, small-format goat cheeses. This encouraged more regular production, while many regional techniques remained farm-based.
Scientific and Sanitary Modernization, 19th and 20th Centuries
Cheesemaking increasingly adopted a scientific understanding of hygiene, cultures, temperature control, and ripening. Some production became more commercial or industrial to meet broad consumer demand. Artisanal producers continued to emphasize raw milk, local molds, hand-ladling, ash, and cellar aging to maintain traditional character.
AOP Protection & Artisanal Revival, 20th Century–Present
France introduced strict Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (A.O.C.) Protégée (A.O.P) designations in the mid-1900s to legally safeguard traditional regional goat cheeses. Legally, an A.O.C.-protected cheese was required to be made in a specific area, with specific ingredients, using artisanal technique. This guaranteed the consumer the authentic Brie de Meaux, Camembert de Normandie, Comté, and Roquefort, among others.
As of 2026, there are 46 cheeses in France with the Appellation d’Origine Protégée (A.O.P.) designation, of which 14 are goat cheeses†. This status translates to Protected Designation of Origin (P.D.O.) in English.
In the 1970s and 80s, the farm-to-table movement sparked a surge in American and international artisanal goat cheese-making, popularizing fresh chèvre logs globally.
French legal protection came first as AOC. The decisive immediate predecessor of the EU’s AOP system was France’s Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) framework. It legally connected a product name to a defined place and prescribed production methods. The European AOP/PDO system later extended comparable protection across the EU.
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*The Fertile Crescent, also known as the “cradle of civilization,” is an area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that covered the lands we now know as Iraq, small portions of Iran and Turkey, the Levantine coast of the eastern Mediterranean (Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and the West Bank) and Egypt’s Nile Valley. It is here where humanity made the transformative leap from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture and complex societies.
Around 10,000 BCE (the Neolithic Period), human communities in this region began systematically cultivating wild grasses and taming local animals. The “founder crops” were domesticated: wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, and flax. Livestock was domesticated for food, milk, wool, and labor: sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs.
The civilizations that arose in the region (including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians) introduced foundational concepts still used today: writing (Sumerian cuneiform is the earliest known writing system), early legal codes, including the Code of Hammurabi, the wheel, early metallurgy (bronze), base-60 mathematics (which gives us 60-minute hours and 360-degree circles), and advanced astronomy.
†France’s 14 AOC goat cheeses: Banodon, Chabichou du Poitou, Charolais, Chevrotin, Crottin de Chavignol, Mâconnais, Mothais-sur-Feuille, Pélardon, Picodon, Pouligny-Saint-Pierre, Rigotte de Condrieu, Rocamadour, Sainte-Maure de Touraine, Selles-sur-Cher, Valençay. Wouldn’t it be great to get together a tasting of all 14?
Other European countries also produce PDO-protected goat cheeses, most notably Spain’s Majorero (Fuerteventura goat milk) and Ibores (Extremadura goat milk), Greece’s feta (while famous for sheep’s milk feta, many Greek PDO cheeses are made from a mix of sheep’s and goat’s milk, such as traditional feta and barrel-aged feta; and Italy’s Robiola di Roccaverano, that can be made entirely from goat’s milk.
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