It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

I spent a couple of months in Switzerland for a project and supermarkets there often have this booth that me and my friends referred to as the &quot;Kingdom of Cheese&quot;.<p>The Kingdom of Cheese is a climate-controlled enclave with just cheese - the person there is happy to help you decide because they know you&#x27;ll be back eventually as indeed the products there have those crystals.

I’ve always loved the crunch in a good Gouda, and it’s really fun to read some details about tyrosine crystals that cause it.

How long until cheese makers start adding the crunchy crystals to give the appearance of quality without the actual quality?

Visited Gouda in the Netherlands and learned this. Best cheese I’ve ever had.

Cheese crystals are umami. Many of them are glutamate crystals. I am curious if the other amino crystals have a similar flavor profile.

Was proud I planned out buying a couple of pounds of cheddar from the supermarket and keeping it in our spare fridge for a year and had aged cheddar for Thanksgiving baked mac and cheese last November.

Costco sells the Coastal cheddar which has a lot of this kind of crystals.

This thread makes me realise I must be the only person on earth that detests the taste of the crystals.

Obligatory reference to the excellent book: The Science of Cheese by Michael H. Tunick.<p>This book is an in depth scientific introduction to, exactly, cheese. A great read, you can feel the passion the man has for his work!

I&#x27;m now kind of upset at myself that I have thrown out perfectly good Cheddar in the past due to white spots.

&gt; Generally speaking, calcium lactate will be found on the outside of a cheese (usually a cheddar), and tyrosine or leucine crystals will be on the inside. Calcium lactate can also form on the inside of cheese, but tyrosine and leucine crystals cannot.<p>... Cannot form on the outside, presumably.

Tangential, but I recently noticed that natamycin, an antifungal agent, is being used in packages of shredded cheese as a preservative.<p>I was a little taken aback on seeing it, given that antibiotic stewardship has been pushed so much in the last decade.<p>I realize that natamycin is an antifungal and not an antibiotic, and that mechanisms of developing resistance are likely different between eukaryotes and prokaryotes. However, I’m still somewhat concerned what long-term low-level exposure will mean.

It seems wrong to me that most of what people now call cheese is not at all like what I think of as &quot;real cheese&quot;. I have ended up making cheese and it is both fascinating, productive and tasty. While there are many &quot;recipes&quot; for cheeses, they are mainly focused on preparing the cheese for aging. These are often techniques, like washing the curd (gouda) or cheddaring (cheddar).<p>The aging part takes more work. I converted a 7.5 CU refrigerator using an Inkbird temp controller. That works surprisingly well. Currently I&#x27;m attempting to improve the humidity control with a humidity version of the Inkbird.<p>But highly recommended. I have everything I made (even the failures) with the exception of one of the first attempts.