🟫 Brunost

Brunost is Norway's "brown cheese", made from whey with added milk and cream ². Norwegians also call it mysost, and Gudbrandsdal locals raudost, "red cheese" ². The Codex Alimentarius has a separate standard for whey cheeses ¹; under the WHO and FAO definition of cheese it is not true cheese, so Norway has widened its own definition ².

Today about 90% of the whey’s water is evaporated under vacuum, raising the solids to 45–50%, then cooked in kettles to about 75% solids. It turns brown in the last 15 minutes, when it heats up to almost 100 °C. It is then quickly cooled to 80–85 °C with vigorous stirring to keep the lactose crystals small: “sandy” brunost counts as defective. Almost half of its dry matter is milk sugar ².

There are several types. Prim has over 30% water and spreads, while sliceable brunost has under 25%. Ekte geitost is made from goat's whey, milk and cream, Gudbrandsdalsost from cow's whey with milk, cream and some goat's milk, and fløtemysost from cow's alone. Fat ranges from about 7% in dry matter to 35% ².

In 1863, 17-year-old Anne of Solbråsetra in Gudbrandsdal competed with other dairymaids to make the best mysost. A neighbour's, with goat's milk, tasted better; having no goats, she asked her father for some cream, which was seen as a waste. Years later, married to Tor Hov, she began selling it in Kristiania, and it helped the valley through an economic crisis. In 1933, aged 87, she received the King's Medal of Merit ³. In 1908 Tretten dairy began production to her recipe ²³.

Whey used to be boiled in iron pots, which made brunost a good source of iron; dairies later added iron themselves, but this was banned from 2001 ². It is sliced with an ostehøvel, the cheese slicer patented by Thor Bjørklund in 1925 ⁴. Sweden has its own mesost and messmör, especially in Jämtland; some is made in India and Japan, and Norwegian brunost is popular in South Korea ².

In January 2013 a truck carrying 27 tonnes of brunost caught fire in the Brattli tunnel at Tysfjord. Days later the cheese was still burning, gases made it too dangerous to enter, and officials expected the tunnel to stay closed for two to three weeks more ⁵.

Brunost or geitost, brunost or Swedish mesost? All are whey cheeses, made from whey rather than curd, but the recipes differ. Ekte geitost uses goat's whey, milk and cream, while Gudbrandsdalsost is cow's whey with milk, cream and some goat's milk. Sweden has its own mesost and messmör. Prim is the spreadable kind, with over 30% water, whereas sliceable brunost has under 25%. None of them is a caramel dessert: the sweetness comes from milk sugar that caramelises as the whey is boiled down.

The pack says "brunost" (brown cheese), often with the type: Gudbrandsdalsost, fløtemysost, ekte geitost or prim, the soft one. It is a whey cheese, so look for that wording rather than a PDO logo. It is sold as a brown block or a tube at a delicatessen, a Scandinavian food shop or the cheese counter of a larger supermarket. Check the fat figure and whether the milk is cow's or goat's.

Why it matters to you. Brunost is sliced thinly with a cheese slicer onto bread, crispbread, waffles and lefse, the Norwegian potato flatbread; it also goes into ice cream, panna cotta and game sauces. It is sweet and calorie-dense: according to the USDA, 100 g of goat brunost has 466 kcal, 42.6 g of carbohydrates, 29.5 g of fat and 400 mg of calcium. It keeps about four months at 1–5 °C and up to a year at −8 °C; deeper freezing spoils its texture ²⁶.