Crackers! How we’ve been carving the cheese all wrong

If you thought carving up your camembert and slicing your stilton was a simple matter, then hard cheese.

Because it seems that when it comes to divvying up our Christmas cheese selections, millions of us are getting it wrong.

Luckily to save you from embarrassing yourself with a cheese knife, food gurus have issued a handy guide detailing the proper way to slice every type and shape of cheese to get the most from the taste and texture.

This includes everything from where to plunge the knife in the first place to the shape of the chunk that is carved from the block.

According to the Good Housekeeping guide, brie and camembert should be divided into quarters, then eighths and so on to ensure everyone gets an equal piece that includes a bit of the riper centre. Hard cheeses such as cheddar and red leicester should be cut into rectangular chunks.

This has the added bonus of making it easy to divide them into cubes for putting on cocktail sticks if you fancy some classic party canapes. And rather than shaving off your stilton in small pieces, you should cut a thin slice down the whole length that includes the softer texture near the tip. The guide even addresses the proper etiquette for unusually-shaped cheeses such as a pyramid of goat’s cheese. For those in doubt, it needs to be cut from the centre outwards in diagonal cuts so everyone gets a little piece of the ash rind that tastes so good. The guide states: ‘An oozing brie, veiny blue and tangy cheddar cheeseboard is the perfect way to round off a festive feast.

‘But rather than cutting into the cheese at any angle, there’s a trick to getting the best from your cheese. According to connoisseurs, there’s an art to cutting cheese. Shape, size and even texture play a part in how each variation should be sliced.’