Raw milk
Milk that has not been heated above body temperature before cheesemaking, keeping its native bacteria and enzymes.
Also: lait cru, latte crudo, unpasteurised milk
Raw milk cheese is made from milk that has not been pasteurised or thermised; under European rules it must not be heated above forty degrees. It keeps its own population of bacteria, yeasts and enzymes, which carry the character of the animals, their feed and the farm into the cheese, and which many makers believe give more complex and more varied flavours. Comté, Beaufort, Gruyère, Parmigiano Reggiano, Roquefort, Reblochon and Salers must be raw milk. Making it safely depends on very clean, fresh milk from healthy animals. Rules differ by country: in the United States raw-milk cheese must be aged at least sixty days, and in India nearly all commercial cheese uses heated milk.