While gender has long governed the world of cheesemongering, as it has in many other French culinary professions, the rules are changing.
Nathalie Quatrehomme recalls her cheesemonger mother, Marie, taking over the family living room, assembling and disassembling a plexiglass apparatus supporting dozens of different cheeses in the months leading up to the very first cheese-focused iteration of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF) competition, held every few years to recognise the country’s best craftspeople.
“I was 17 at the time,” Nathalie recalled. “She spent an entire year practising on our living room table.”
According to Nathalie, Marie’s final project, “La Pyramide des Saveurs” (pyramid of flavours), began with a base of real grass above which grew a veritable tower of cheeses ranging in flavour and texture, progressing from mild to assertive. From milky and wheyy to dense and crumbly.
“She really began with the milk,” Nathalie explained. “The grass, then the milk bottles, then the cheeses, and up and up and up… it was really quite lovely.”
By the time Marie Quatrehomme was designing her cheese tower, she had already undergone a slew of competition-related tests on cheese culture, technology, and terroir. She had dazzled jurors in blind tastings and fielded questions about the 46 French cheese appellations, each governed by a strict charter governing everything from regional provenance to animal breed. She was grilled on cheese legislation and questioned on the economics of constructing a cheese buffet, all in the pursuit of recognition, not just from her peers, but from the French people as a whole.
“You could say [La Pyramide] was the ultimate test,” Nathalie said of her mother’s cheese sculpture. She remembered watching, Marie was named one of the four inaugural champions of the category, alongside fellow cheesemongers Hervé Mons, Laurent Dubois, and Christian Janier, after she built it for the final time at the competition.
“I saw my father cry – my father, who never cries – so proud of his wife at that moment,” Nathalie said.
Gender has long governed the cheese world, as it has many other culinary professions in France. Nathalie explained that historically, a woman’s place in a fromagerie (cheese shop) was often behind the counter, selling cheeses aged and otherwise cared for by her husband. (This is true of many traditional French food businesses; to the chagrin of female bakers, the word boulangère is still frequently defined in French dictionaries as “the wife of the baker” and “she who sells the bread.”)
Marie’s MOF victory in 2000 was groundbreaking in the world of cheese. And she wasn’t just a trailblazer in the brand-new cheese category; she was the first woman to receive any MOF honour since the contest’s inception more than 75 years ago. (Marie’s work even earned her the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit, in 2014.)
“The first woman in any MOF category is extremely significant, and here, we see that Marie Quatrehomme earned the title alongside several men,” Lindsey Tramuta, journalist and author of The New Paris and The New Parisienne, explained. “She was outnumbered, but she demonstrated that gender had little to do with professional excellence.”
Since 2000, 24 cheese MOFs have been designated, representing producers such as Dominique Bouchait, consultants and teachers such as François Robin, and cheesemongers such as all of the inaugural winners. Only four of these MOFs are women, namely Josiane Deal (2004), Laetitia Gaborit (2007), Christelle Lorho (2019), and Marie Quatrehomme.
But breaking gender stereotypes is far from the only thing that distinguishes the Quatrehomme fromagerie.
“I don’t think you can underestimate the power of a compelling family story,” Tramuta said. “Marie’s father-in-law opened the business, she carried it to greatness, and now she’s passed it on to her children who will hopefully ensure the heritage is preserved for generations to come. With that generational trajectory comes expertise, passion, and dedication. commitment and a thorough understanding of the market.”
The flagship Quatrehomme store is located on the border of the 6th and 7th arrondissements of Paris. Nathalie’s grandparents founded it in 1953: he, the son of a Loire Valley farmer who came to Paris in search of a new future, and she, the niece of a Brittany grocer. The fact that the shop, name, and fromagerie tradition were passed down through Nathalie’s father, Alain, makes Marie’s decision to enter the MOF race all the more daring.
“My father was already quite established in the profession,” Nathalie explained, citing his committee and trade union work. However, there was more to it. “He’s fairly proud while also being fairly discreet,” she said. “So participating in the contest wasn’t really what he wanted, both for pride and for discretion.”
Nathalie explained that Marie was “a little less well-known,” but she was nothing if not dedicated.
“After 15 years in education, she became a cheesemonger, fully embracing her new profession by becoming both a respected authority on all things cheese and an expert affineur” (one who is trained in the art of ageing cheese), “I’ve been developing and cultivating close relationships with cheesemakers all over France,” Jennifer Greco, a French cheese educator and tour guide based in Paris, explained.
Despite their family legacy and celebrity mother, Nathalie and her brother Maxime were not necessarily destined for a career in the fromagerie.
“They never put any pressure on me,” Nathalie said of her parents. “It was a very difficult job.”
Nathalie instead built a successful marketing career, but after five years, in 2010, she took a chance and picked up a cheese wire again.
“I told myself. ‘Try. Just give it a shot. Your parents and grandparents sacrificed their entire lives for this. It would be a shame not to give it a shot.'”
What she told her parents would be a year-long experiment has turned into her full-time job a decade later.
“I enjoy cheese. I really like the product. I enjoy touching it. I adore the aroma of the cellar “She stated. “I can swoon over pressed cheese and fall head over heels for a denser, drier goat. I adore the colour blue, and I have frequent cravings for it. I thoroughly enjoy a washed rind.”