What are the four cheeses generally used in"four-cheese" pizzas?

Question

In common consumer pizza, microwave and bake-at-home pizzas are often advertised as four-cheese pizzas. What are these four cheeses, traditionally? Do different brands use different mixes, or does everyone stay about the same? How are these cheeses traditionally mixed, in what fashion?

Answer 1

They all seem to use different cheeses depending on the brand.

• The most consistent cheese is definitely mozzarella, which makes sense as it's the default cheese on most pizzas.
• Second to that is some sort of hard grating cheese like Parmesan or Asiago... which also makes sense as it's a traditional pizza condiment.
• Other Italian cheeses also seem popular like fontina and provolone
• But non-Italian cheeses like cheddar certainly show up.

Below are some examples. I don't recommend any of these products, they just came up in web searches and specifically describe which four cheeses they use.

Amy's uses: Fontina, provolone, Parmesan, mozzarella:

Frontera uses: Mozzarella, white cheddar, smoked provolone, asiago.

California Pizza Kitchen uses: Mozzarella (apparently more than one kind), fontina, gouda

Lean Cuisine uses: low fat mozzarella, Parmesan, asiago, romano

Answer 2

As others have noted, there is no standard.

Pizza's nominally Italian it would make sense to stick to the Italian cheeses or at least start with them. And there's no point if you cannot taste the distinction between them, so why not go for cheeses that have distinct personality. Finally, while you can mix them evenly, also consider spreading them in clumps so that each bite has a bit different flavor.

As an example, one could use mozzarella for the base, then scatter chunks of gorgonzola, tallegio, and smoked provolone. You can use big chunks--the size of a postage stamp and maybe 1/3 as thick--because these cheese all melt well.

If the cheeses are of equal character your starting point could be to use about equal amounts of these four by weight. For example, 125g of each of the above four would suffice for an entire 11x14", 27x35cm thin pizza (the pizza size pictured, though its only half a 4-cheese). Alternatively you could skip one of these soft cheeses and instead just cover the thing with a grated hard cheese, parmesan (a bit sour) or pecorino romano (tangy).

Moving a bit further beyond your question, when making a 4-cheese sauce for pasta one example formula would be 2 parts gorgonzola, 1 part tallegio, 1 part parmesan, and 1 part ricotta. 100g total cheese melted in 200g cream would be two servings or so.