By Ines Keane
Pale yellow inside. Red wax outside. A flat-ended sphere. Wikipedia describes the cheese in just those terms, and that plain description hides a lot of history. Edam is the cheese named after a town, and the town is named after a dam.
A dam, a toll and a town
Wikipedia says the name Edam comes from a dam on the small river E, sometimes written IJe, where the first settlement stood. That settlement was called IJedam.
What the cheese is
Wikipedia’s cheese entry describes Edam as semi-hard, made from pasteurised cow’s milk, with a pale yellow interior and a rind coated in red paraffin wax.
Questions a buyer would ask
A cheese is a food, and food has rules we do not cover here. Ask the producer how long a particular wheel was aged. Ask whether the wax is the red paraffin coating the entry describes. Ask where the milk came from and where the wheel was made. We have not found a source naming any producer, and we name none.
Roam first. Shop later.