Made from whole cow's milk, this cheese has been known since the 12th century. In 1680, a French document refers to Camembert as "a very good cheese, well suited to aid digestion after a meal washed down with good wine." In 1791, Camembert was reputably reinvented by a French farmer's wife named Marie Harel (née Fontain), then 30 years old, near Vimoutiers in Lower Normandy. By one account, she learned the secret of its manufacture from a priest, whom she had hidden on her farm to protect from the revolutionaries in Paris. She is sometimes confused with another Marie Harel, born in 1779, who, at age 12, is said to have invented the cheese on her farm near Camembert. Others claim that it was Napoleon III who named the cheese after having been presented with some by Marie Harel's daughter, Marie Harel Paynel, when he went to Vimoutiers for the inauguration of the Paris Grand Railroad. Still others claim that the emperor did not pass through Vimoutiers but rather stopped at Surdon, where he received the cheese from Thomas Paynel, who married the second Marie Harel.
The well-known light, rounded, wooden box used for packing Camembert was invented in 1890 by M. Eugène Ridel. This permitted the fragile cheese to be shipped abroad and achieve worldwide fame. In 1910, Penicillium candidum was added to the cheese, a bacterium that gives the cheese its characteristic white-dusted outside layer.
