Use Fromage as your guide to worldwide cheeses, the #1 app preferred by cheese lovers. Fromage provides a convenient pocket resource of fantastic cheeses made throughout the world for your culinary exploration. The cheese library contains well beyond 1,600 world cheeses from over 35 countries and is continuously expanded thanks to suggestions from our established base of Fromage users worldwide.
Each cheese entry features artistically presented cheese photos, historically narrated flavor descriptions, website links to the producer’s dairy or fromager, and suggested best choices for complementary wines. You can add your own favorite cheeses to the standard library and include personal notes about any of the cheeses.
Searching within the library for that special cheese can be by name, country, milk-type, texture, or by your own custom tags (such as #atmystore).
So, if you’re a classically trained chef, professional party planner, cheese buyer, or just plain cheese lover, grab Fromage, your favorite wine, and experience the wonderful and historic flavors of cheese.
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Fromage comes with the ability to create personal cheese notes, rate cheeses from 1 to 5 stars (included an “Avoid” rating), add cheeses to your favorite lists (Try, Buy, or Favorites categories), record tasting impressions with up to 70 tasting keywords, and search the cheese library.
You can also enter your own cheeses (including photos captured from your device camera) and list those cheeses automatically in the “My Additions” category. There is also a “Share” feature so cheese information can be sent (via e-mail) to friends or to the developer for inclusion in future versions of Fromage.
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Internet or Wi-Fi connection is not required for program use, which is great for remote locations when no data plan is available.
When internet is available, Fromage uses iCloud to synchronize your cheese entries and notes between all of your Apple devices which can include iPhone, iPad, and Macintosh.
The application provides English, French, Spanish, and German languages when the iOS device settings are set to that language.
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From the Developer –
Hello my name is Steve Welch and I want to thank you for your interest in Fromage. I have enjoyed developing Fromage and bringing great cheeses into your kitchen.
It is hard to believe this app began nearly 15 years ago with only a handful of French cheeses a short time after the “new” iPhone was introduced to the world. Fromage quickly became a favorite and best seller in the “Food and Drink” category and the first “Cheese” app available in the app store.
I also wanted to share that I was once a cheese maker myself, although it was some time ago. During the late ‘70’s, I worked summers at being a cheese maker at Rogue Valley Creamery in Oregon USA. Tom Vella was the owner and I made all sorts of cheeses including their vintage artisan Cheddar and Blue cheese’s. It was through this experience and the iPhone platform opportunities that led me to developing Fromage.
Bon Appétit
Very good (not insanely great) selection of cheeses. Clunky searching and data entry
Overall I find this app very useful. It has an extensive selection of cheeses and has assembled a lot of useful information about each cheese.
However, there are many widely available French cheeses (my main reference - I can't speak about other regions' cheeses) that are curiously absent. Even in Australia, there are many French cheeses which are available, so I wonder why they are absent from the app (eg Roy de Valles / Itche Bai, Chaubier, Petit Sapin, Brie de Meaux to name just a few).
I noticed in the description of Beaufort that it did not mention one of the cheese's most distinctive assets: its concave (indented) rind. I wonder what other potentially very useful information is omitted elsewhere.
The searching is rather clunky, as you have to scroll through other categories rather than being able to quickly jump to lower (alphabetically grouped) categories. Therefore, you have to scroll through all the cow milk cheeses to get to the ewe or goat milk cheeses.
When adding a new cheese, the app forces you to refer to a milk as "Goat Ewe" despite the composition. eg Roy de Valles is 80-90% Ewe and only 10-20% Goat, yet the app does not allow you to refer to it as "Ewe Goat" and nor does it let you specify % compositions of each milk type, which would be even better.
There's also no way to quickly assign favourite status or star ratings.
In short, I think that the interface design could also do with some sprucing up from some design guru. It has a look (a little) of being like an app built by a database programmer, but with less consideration of design / style and interface usability.
So, overall, it is good and I can see myself using it a lot as a ready reckoner. However, it's not great.
Worth your time and $
Great App, although just a little heavy on U.S. products (for which most serious gourmets outside of the USA have little interest). Excellent French and Italian references. Overall well worth your time.
