Which Cracker Goes With Which Cheese

Match the cracker to the cheese by strength, not by looks. Plain water crackers carry soft, delicate cheeses without arguing with them. Seed crisps studded with fruit and nuts stand up to blue and washed rind. Flatbread and pita handle hard cheddar and anything you want to scoop. If you are only buying one box, buy plain.

The cracker is the plate, not the meal

A cracker has one job: hold the cheese up and add a little salt and crunch on the way. It goes wrong in exactly two directions. Too loud, and you taste rosemary and parmesan instead of the goat's curd you paid for. Too flimsy, and a cold wedge of cheddar snaps it in half over the carpet.

We range crackers because they go into the cheese and grazing hampers we hand-pack in Corio, so we taste them against cheese all year. Close to thirty of those boxes come from one maker, Valley Produce Company, and our cracker wall runs across six styles priced from $2.95 to $7.95. The single change that improves a board most is buying two of those styles rather than two boxes of one. It costs about four dollars more, and the second box should do a different job.

The six styles on the wall, and what each one is for

Crackerthins: the box to buy if you are buying one

Thin, pale, barely salted, no flavour of their own. Neutrality is the point. VPC Crackerthins Plain at $3.49 carries brie, triple cream, a fresh curd and a runny washed rind, and disappears under the cheese instead of competing. The catch is structure: a thin water cracker snaps under cheese straight from the fridge, so bring the cheese out 30 to 45 minutes ahead.

The flavoured one worth knowing about is VPC Crackerthins Parmesan Cheese at $2.95, one of the two cheapest boxes on the wall and one that reads wrong on paper. Cheese under cheese sounds like a mistake, and under a delicate brie it is. Under ricotta, a fresh curd, a tomato-heavy antipasto or prosciutto, baked parmesan behaves like seasoning rather than a second cheese. It is also the crumb in our parmesan crackerthin crumbed zucchini fries, which is what to do with the half box nobody finished.

Rosemary Crackerthins at $2.99 are the other safe flavoured box, because rosemary and fresh goat's cheese are an old pairing. Keep both off a cheese you want to taste on its own.

Mini artisan crackers: the all-rounder

Thicker, handcrafted, with real chew. Mini Artisan Crackers with Sea Salt at $4.95 are the compromise box, sturdy under a slab of hard cheese and quiet under a brie. If you want to think about this once only, buy these. The cheese version at the same price suits cured meat, olives and a sharp chutney better than the cheese itself, and La Panzanella Mini Croccantini at $6.50 are the Italian take, crisp and light with coarse sea salt.

Seed crisps: the ones that do half the work

Dense, thin-sliced and packed with fruit and nuts, seed crisps are the style that changed cheese boards here. All six are $6.95 for 150g: fig and olive, cranberry and hazelnut, quince and almond, rosemary raisin and pecan, truffle and honey, and kalamata olive with sun-dried tomato.

A seed crisp is the cracker and the accompaniment in one slice, so you can skip the paste, the muscatels and the extra bowl. Quince and almond under a blue is quince paste and nuts already assembled, which matters when you are building a board on the 24th of December and the bench has run out of room. Truffle and honey breaks the quiet-cracker rule, so give it its own job: truffle and honey seed crisps with whipped ricotta.

The native artisan cracker: the one people pick up and read

Wattleseed and fig native artisan crackers at $7.69 for 100g are the most talked-about box on any board we send out. Nutty wattleseed sits beautifully against a sharp cheddar and the fig stops it drying the mouth out. Put them out deliberately, not to bulk a platter.

Flatbread, pita and bagel toast: for scooping

Wide, rigid and built to be loaded. VPC Artisan Flatbread is $4.95 for 130g, and four of its six flavours are on the shelf right now: kale, beetroot, cheese, and cheese with tomato and basil. Kale flatbread is a chip in waiting, which is the idea behind kale flatbread chips with avocado and lime dip.

The rosemary, parmesan and garlic pita at $6.95 is oven baked in Australia, a dip cracker first. Olive oil and sea salt pita at the same price sits under a hard cheese without taking over, and bagel toast at $5.95 is the sturdiest thing on the wall, right for a soft blue you are spreading. Keep all three off the soft whites: a garlic pita under a delicate brie is a waste of the brie.

Gluten free crackerthins: not an afterthought

Three of them, made with potato starch, which gives a distinct crunch and a buttery flavour rather than the papery snap gluten free crackers once had. Original at $3.49, cracked black pepper at $3.49 and rosemary at $2.95. Pepper is the one to get if there is aged cheddar on the board, and they hold a spread, which is what smoked trout pate with gluten free crackers is built on. Set that plate out with its own knife before anyone asks, and the rest of the gluten free range sits beside them.

The pairing table: cheese first, cracker second

Work from the cheese out. The stronger the cheese, the more the cracker can bring; the more delicate it is, the quieter the cracker has to be.

Smoked cheddar and the other loud cheeses want what aged cheddar wants, only sturdier: bagel toast, nothing sweet. And one rule survives every board. Plain should be about half of what you buy, because interesting crackers get eaten first and plain ones get eaten longest.

How many crackers per person

Plan by what the board is asked to do, not by how many people are there. Allow 8 to 10 crackers a head before dinner, 10 to 12 for an afternoon of picking, and 14 to 16 when the board is the meal. For eight before dinner that is two 100g boxes of plain and a 150g pack of seed crisps, with a spare kept back.

A 150g pack of seed crisps goes further than a 100g box of water crackers even though it looks like less, because each crisp is a mouthful on its own. For the cheese weights, the Christmas cheese board quantities do the sums.

Three things that go wrong

1. They go out too early. An Australian December afternoon takes the crunch out of an open box in under an hour. Put out the first half hour, seal the rest.
2. Everything on one plate. Seeded crisps shed, and within twenty minutes the crumbs are over the plain ones. Give them their own end.
3. Not enough plain. Most of the wall is flavoured, so it is easy to finish with four interesting boxes and nothing neutral. Buy the plain one first, and buy it early: crackers keep for months.

Everything except the cheese

We do not sell cheese, which is a useful position to write from: we have no reason to talk you out of the wedge at your deli. We sell what goes around it, and the Just Add Cheese Hamper at $84.95 is that idea in a box. Fruit paste does the other half of what a seed crisp does alone. VPC Fruit Pyramid in fig and almond at $6.95 is the safe one, and choosing between quince, fig and pear is a question of its own. For layout, start with how to build a cheese board; the Christmas charcuterie board adds the cured meat.

Cracker and cheese questions

What crackers go with cheese?

Plain water crackers suit soft cheeses like brie, camembert and fresh goat's cheese. Sturdy rustic crackers suit aged cheddar. Seed crisps suit blue and washed rind, because sweetness balances salt. Flatbread and pita are for dips. Buy two styles, plain about half.

What crackers go best with brie?

A plain, thin water cracker. Brie is delicate and a flavoured cracker takes over the mouthful, so a plain Crackerthin or a sea salt artisan cracker is the safest choice and usually the best. For contrast, a fig and olive seed crisp cuts the cream.

Do parmesan crackers work on a cheese board?

Yes, with the right cheeses. A baked parmesan cracker behaves like seasoning rather than a second cheese, so it suits ricotta, fresh curd, triple cream and anything with tomato or cured meat beside it. Keep it off a brie.

Are seed crisps better than plain crackers?

Not better, different. Seed crisps carry fruit and nuts, so they double as the accompaniment and suit blue and aged cheddar. Plain crackers never fight what is on top.

Pick two boxes from the cracker range, one plain and one with something going on, and the cheese in your fridge is a better board than it was this morning. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post, and shipping is free over $100. To send the whole board, our Christmas hampers do it in a box.