How traditional French Camembert is made using raw milk

• Camembert originated in the northern French region of Normandy, where it has been made for centuries.
• To be called Camembert, a cheese has to weigh at least 250 grams, be 10 centimeters in diameter, and have about 22% fat content.

• We visited Le 5 Frères, a family-run farm in the village of Bermonville.
• It makes 400 wheels of Camembert every day following the traditional recipe using raw milk and ladles it into molds by hand.

To be called Camembert, a cheese has to weigh at least 250 grams, be 10 centimeters in diameter, and have about 22% fat content.

The iconic cheese originated in the northern French region of Normandy, where it has been made for centuries. Legend has it that it was first made in 1791 in the village of Camembert by Marie Harel, a farmer from Normandy, after a priest from Brie shared cheesemaking tips with her. Although Marie really existed, it's probable that the cheese originated a few centuries earlier, in the 12th century. But thanks to Marie and her family after her, Camembert started to be produced on a larger scale and gained popularity.

We visited Le 5 Frères, a family-run farm in the village of Bermonville that makes Camembert following the traditional recipe using raw milk and ladles it into molds by hand.

"Camembert is milk, territory, and authenticity," Le 5 Frères Cofounder Charles Bréant told Insider. "It's a cheese that is intimately linked, meaning that Camembert is really the Normand cheese. It's a soft cheese with a flowery rind all around. It's really the emblem of Normandy."

Today, France makes 360 million wheels of Camembert each year, and the cheese has become a symbol of French culture. It was used to feed French soldiers during World War I and even gave its name to the pie chart, which in French is called "un diagramme en Camembert."

More and more dairies have started to pasteurize their milk for health and safety reasons, leaving only a few farmers in France still making it the traditional way, using raw milk, which is permitted in Europe but forbidden in the US.

"Clients are very attached to the geographical origin of products, so it's important to make Camembert in Normandy," said Bréant. "You can make Camembert somewhere else, but it doesn't have the same flavor, it doesn't have the same taste. And because we don't heat up the milk too much, the Camembert has really the taste of what cows eat here, and so the Camembert we make here at the farm has a taste that you can't imitate."

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in November 2019.