How to Build a Cheese Board From a Hamper

A lot of our hampers arrive with a wooden board, crackers, olives and something sweet like quince paste. That is most of a cheese board already. What is missing is the cheese, and a bit of method.

Here is how to turn the box into a board worth putting on a table.

How much cheese to buy

The number people get wrong in both directions.

• As a nibble before dinner: about 50g a person.
• As the main event with drinks: about 100 to 150g a person.

So a board for six people, as a grazing dinner, wants around 600g to 900g in total. Three cheeses at 250g each covers it comfortably.

Three cheeses, chosen by texture

The trick is not buying three cheeses you like. It is buying three that are different from each other, because a board of three similar cheddars reads as one cheese in three shapes.

Pick one from each group:

Something hard. Aged cheddar, gruyère, manchego, pecorino. This is the reliable one that everyone eats.

Something soft. Brie, camembert, a washed rind if the room is adventurous. This is the one that makes the board look generous, because it spreads and slumps.

Something with character. A blue, a goat's cheese, or an aged gouda. This is the one people talk about. Keep it to one, and put it slightly apart from the rest so its flavour does not travel.

Four is fine. Five starts to be a shop rather than a board.

What your hamper already brought

Most of our board hampers arrive with some version of the following, and each piece has a job.

The board itself. Wooden, and worth treating properly: wipe it rather than soaking it, and never put it in the dishwasher. Oil it occasionally with a food-safe mineral oil and it will outlast everything else in the box by years.

Crackers and flatbread. The vehicle. Plain beats flavoured, because a rosemary and sea salt cracker fights whatever you put on it.

Olives. The salty, acidic element. They reset the palate between cheeses, which is exactly why they turn up on every good board.

Quince paste or fruit paste. The sweet counterpoint, and the traditional partner to a hard cheese or a blue. If your hamper has it, put it next to the strongest cheese rather than in a corner.

Nuts. Texture, and they fill the gaps that make a board look sparse.

What to add on the day

• The cheese, obviously. Three, by texture, as above.
• Something fresh. Grapes, figs, sliced pear or apple. This is the cheapest thing you can add and it does the most for how the board looks.
• Cured meat, if you want it. Prosciutto, salami. Fold it rather than laying it flat, so it has height.
• Honey, if there is a blue or a goat's cheese on the board. A small pot changes both.

Laying it out

Five minutes, and it is mostly about not putting things in rows.

1. Cheese first, spaced apart. Put the three cheeses down in a triangle rather than a line, with room between them. Everything else fills in around.
2. Cut the first piece of each. A whole wedge nobody has touched stays untouched. Slicing the first few pieces gives people permission.
3. Put wet things in small bowls. Olives and honey go in something, not straight on the wood. Otherwise the crackers go soft and the board stains.
4. Fill the gaps last. Nuts and fruit are the filler. Keep going until you cannot see much bare board, because bare wood is what makes a board look thin.
5. One knife per cheese. Otherwise the blue ends up in the brie within about four minutes.

The one rule that matters most: take the cheese out of the fridge an hour before serving. Cold cheese tastes of very little and does not spread. This single step does more than anything else on this list.