Friday
Alkmaar's cheese market morning, the Catholic meatless Friday of cheese pierogi and pasta, and the weekend breakfast of Iran.
Friday is the best-known cheese market day in the world, thanks to Alkmaar. It is also a day of abstinence from meat in the Catholic tradition, which has made cheese a Friday food in many countries, and in Iran and parts of the Middle East it is the weekly day of rest, with a long breakfast of bread and white cheese.
Alkmaar's Friday market
From the end of March or early April to the end of September, Alkmaar's cheese market opens at ten on Friday mornings on the Waagplein. The porters' guild, founded in 1593, carries the cheeses on barrows to the weigh house, and the market has opened on Fridays in this way for centuries, pausing only during the Second World War.
Meatless Friday
Catholic tradition keeps Friday as a day of penance without meat, strictly in Lent and by custom through the year in many families. Fish is the best-known Friday food, but cheese is the other: Polish naleśniki and pierogi filled with twaróg, Italian pasta with ricotta or a heap of grated cheese, and cheese pies and soufflés in France. In Rome, Friday is fish day in the old weekly menu.
The Friday breakfast
In Iran, Friday is the weekend, and families linger over breakfast: flatbread, white cheese, walnuts, fresh herbs and sweet tea. Similar spreads of white cheese, olives and bread mark the Friday rest across much of the Arab world.
Traditions
- Alkmaar cheese market: Friday mornings from spring to the end of September.
- Friday abstinence: The Catholic custom of a meatless Friday.
- Friday breakfast: The long weekend breakfast of Iran and the Arab world.
The cheeses
Also part of it, and being written: Gouda cheese (The wheels carried across the Alkmaar square.).
Sources and further reading
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Customs differ by community and family, and are described here as tradition, not instruction. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.