Pairings

Find a selection where everything tastes good together.

A board isn't a list of nice things — it's a set of things that have a reason to be beside each other. Start from a whole coherent board, or from a single ingredient you already love, and let the rest assemble itself around it.

01

Boards that already work

Thirteen selections, each balanced across salt, sweet, fat, acid and crunch. Load one, then pull it apart.
Autumn orchard boardIn season

Autumn Orchard

Fig, persimmon, apple butter, aged cheddar, candied pecan, and a washed-rind that smells like a cellar. The board September is asking for.

Midnight blue and honey board

Midnight Blue & Honey

Three blues at different volumes, honeycomb, black grapes, walnut, dark rye. For a late, small, dark-room party where people are actually tasting.

Nordic winter board

Nordic Winter

Pale cheeses, rye crisp, dill, cured salmon, pickled onion, lingonberry. Restrained on purpose — the only loud thing on it is the red.

Tuscan board

Tuscan Golden Hour

Pecorino, finocchiona, Castelvetrano, grissini, fennel, blood orange. Warm the whole way through, and cheap to build well.

Spanish board

Spanish Sunset

Manchego, membrillo, Marcona, jamón, piquillo, Idiazábal. The one selection where the classic pairing does all the work for you.

Vegetarian feast board

The Vegetarian Feast

Five cheeses across the whole texture range, two pickles carrying the acid the meat usually brings, and a marinated artichoke doing the salt.

Seven more — The Ploughman's, Movie Night, Smoke & Rye, Black & White, The Brunch Board, The Crudité Table, Peak Summer Stone Fruit.

02

Or start from one thing you love

Pick an anchor and the board fills in around it, ranked by affinity.
Roquefort

You've got Roquefort. Now what?

A blue on its own goes home untouched. These five are what it wants beside it — sweet to argue with the salt, a fat to carry it, an acid to reset, and something plain for the people who are nervous.

Honeycomb0.94 · sweetWalnut0.88 · bitterBlack fig0.85 · jamProsciutto0.79 · fatSeeded cracker0.76 · plain

Build a board around Roquefort →

03

Why these go together

56 weighted affinities. Every one carries its reasoning — that line is the whole product.
AllSalty × SweetRich × AcidicShared compoundTexture contrastRegional classicIn season now
001RoquefortHoneycombSalt and sugar at full volume, which is why it works where a subtler sweet would just disappear. The wax gives the bite something to push against, and that resistance is what keeps it from turning cloying.
002Prosciutto di ParmaFresh figFat against sugar, and the fig's seeds are the only crunch in the pairing. Halve them lengthways, cut side up — whole figs just read as decoration.
003Aged GoudaMarcona almondBoth taste of butterscotch. The nut's salt makes the tyrosine crystals in the cheese read as sweet rather than gritty — the pairing fixes the one thing people dislike about very aged cheese.
004Comté 18-monthCornichonA very rich alpine cheese flattens the palate by the third bite. The vinegar resets it. This is why the French essentially never serve one without the other, and why a board with no acid feels heavy long before it runs out.
005ManchegoMarcona almondBoth come off the same Spanish hillside and taste like it — sheep's milk and fried almond share a toasted, faintly grassy note. Salt the almonds heavily; Manchego can take it.
006Gorgonzola DolceWalnutA sweet blue has no edges of its own. The tannin in walnut skin supplies the bitterness the cheese is missing, and the halves give it the only crunch in the bite.
007FinocchionaKalamataFennel and brine are both anise-adjacent, so they read as one flavour rather than two competing ones. Put them at opposite ends of the board or the whole thing tastes like liquorice.

49 more pairings.