How Cheese Gets its Flavor
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This document discusses key factors that influence cheese flavor development, including cheesemaker skill, milk type and quality, terroir influences, starter culture, curd structure development, salt management, rind type, ripening practices, and storage and handling. It explains how each of these pivotal steps impacts the way a cheese tastes. For example, it notes that cheesemaker skill is the most important factor, and that proper curd structure development and ripening are necessary to develop complex flavors, while storage and handling aim to protect established flavors.
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How Cheese Gets its Flavor
- 2. ©2002 CMAB All Rights Reserved Researched and written by Dan Strongin Edited with additional writing by Bob Kenney Technical review by Neville McNaughton
- 3. FLAVOR DEVELOPMENT IN CHEESEMAKING Many factors influence cheese flavor, but there are PIVOTAL STEPS that explain why a cheese tastes the way it does. These steps are the FOCUS of our presentation today
- 4. KEY FACTORS SHAPING CHEESE FLAVOR DEVELOPMENT 1. CHEESEMAKER SKILL 2. MILK TYPE & QUALITY 3. TERROIR INFLUENCES 4. STARTER CULTURE 5. CURD STRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT 6. SALT MANAGEMENT 7. RIND TYPE 8. RIPENING PRACTICES 9. STORAGE & HANDLING
- 5. 1. CHEESEMAKER SKILL Cheesemaker skill is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR determining the quality and flavor of the cheese. A skilled cheesemaker can compensate for the shortcomings in the milk, the facility and the environment, but high quality milk and ideal circumstances will not compensate for shortcomings in the cheesemaker’s skill
- 6. THE ART OF CHEESEMAKING Good cheesemaking is the result of GOOD CHOICES by the cheesemaker in terms of: Milk selection Flavor complexity Terroir influence Make process consistency Ripening practices
- 7. 2. MILK AND FLAVOR Milk choice is an IMPORTANT CREATIVE CHOICE for the cheesemaker and one dictated by a number of factors
- 8. UNDERSTANDING MILK Milk contributes to CHEESE FLAVOR depending on: Animal used cow, sheep or goat Breed used Holstein vs. Jersey Feed given to the animal Overall quality of the milk Blended with other milks Skimmed, partially skimmed or has cream added Raw or pasteurized
- 9. 3. ENVIRONMENT AND FLAVOR: TERROIR Much is said about “terroir” today. Terroir can significantly influence cheese flavor. But for it to do so the cheesemaker must carefully PLAN it into the cheesemaking process.
- 10. UNDERSTANDING TERROIR A French expression meaning OF THE SOIL Refers to diverse environmental influences on a food’s flavor development such as soil composition, microclimate and native microbiology
- 11. TERROIR HAS A LONG TRADITION IN EUROPE Terroir is the result of a well-established PARTNERSHIP between the government and the farmers to steward the environment.
- 12. TERROIR PRACTICES ARE TAKING HOLD IN U.S. Diversify local flora in feed Graze herd on natural grasses Use seasonal milk Use batch culture process that captures indigenous microorganisms Add locally grown herbs to cheese Foster unique aging room microenvironment We are creating our own tradition. There are several methods cheesemakers can use to INTRODUCE TERROIR
- 13. 4. THE ROLE OF STARTER CULTURE STARTER CULTURE is added to the milk in the vat and determines the type of cheese being produced, influencing both flavor and texture.
- 14. STARTER CULTURE “Vat culturization” produces consistent flavor “Batch culturization” can add terroir to cheese flavor Beneficial LIVING BACTERIA impart flavor and texture through fermentation and release enzymes that shape flavor Starter culture is alive with bacteria Starter culture
- 15. COMPLEXITY AND CHEESE COMPLEXITY determines how we experience a cheese. It’s important to note that complexity starts IN THE VAT. The cheesemaker cannot later develop cheese qualities – such as during aging – that are not created in the vat.
- 16. CULTURE VS. COAGULANT Main coagulant used today is Microbial (chymosin) Less impact on flavor than starter culture Coagulation adds ENZYMES causing the milk to thicken and separate into solids and liquids – CURDS AND WHEY
- 17. 5. CURD STRUCTURE Flavor follows structure. Creating a good structure gives a cheese the potential to develop great flavor. Curd structure development is the heart of cheesemaking. How the curds develop in the vat shapes the STRUCTURE of the cheese and determines flavor and texture potential
- 18. STRUCTURE AND FLAVOR Determined when the whey is drained from the curd This is the point WHEN MILK BECOMES CHEESE Structure of the curd forms a MATRIX OF PROTEINS Matrix of proteins
- 19. STRUCTURE AND FLAVOR Coagulated milk Young cheese Aged cheese 11 3322 11 22 33
- 20. Coagulated milk
- 21. Young cheese
- 22. Aged cheese
- 23. 6. SALT AND FLAVOR Salt is more than a seasoning agent. It is an essential tool for the cheesemaker to CONTROL flavor development and ripening
- 24. THE ROLE OF SALT SALT has three functions. It serves as a preservative, a way to inhibit the growth of undesirable bacteria, and as a means for determining how much moisture will remain in the cheese.
- 25. ADDING SALT There are THREE METHODS of salting cheese: Salt added to fresh curd Dry salt rubbed on cheese rind surface Immersing cheese in salt brine
- 26. 7. RINDS & FLAVOR Rind influences enzymatic activity in the cheese and moisture loss during ripening. Rind also directly influences flavor if it is consumed as part of experiencing the cheese. The type of rind on the cheese, or whether the cheese has a rind at all, directly affects FLAVOR DEVELOPMENT during ripening.
- 27. CHEESE RINDS Rindless Natural Rinds Smooth Rinds Surface Ripened Rinds White or Bloomy Rinds Washed Rinds There are FOUR CATEGORIES of cheese rinds
- 28. RINDLESS CHEESE Cheddar Original Blue Monterey Jack Includes cheeses made without a rind. Some are vacuum-sealed in plastic
- 29. NATURAL RINDS St. George Bandage Cheddar Serena Molds cultivated in the aging room develop on rind to protect the cheese
- 30. SMOOTH RINDS Gouda Carmody Northern Gold A smooth, relatively impervious rind. Sometimes called a“perfect” rind
- 31. SURFACE RIPENED RINDS Andante Soft-Ripened Mt. Tam Triple Crème Brie White or Bloomy Rind Mold is added to the curd or sprayed on the surface
- 32. SURFACE RIPENED RINDS Schloss Liederkranz Red Hawk Washed Rinds Surface is washed with whey, brine or flavored liquid
- 33. 8. RIPENING AND FLAVOR Proper ripening is a necessary step in bringing many cheeses to the peak of flavor, but only if the cheese possesses the STRUCTURAL QUALITIES that will be improved by further aging.
- 34. CHEESE RIPENING Fermentation continues during the life of a natural cheese, making changes that affect cheese flavor over time. The cheesemaker can influence these changes by carefully controlling the ripening environment Success in ripening actually started back in the VAT and is completed in the AGING ROOM
- 35. TERROIR IN THE AGING ROOM The cheesemaker can control the the ripening environment to encourage terroir and influence flavor development Add indigenous influences such as local herbs Cultivate microflora in the aging room over time Age different cheeses in the same room Manage airflow that brings in local bacteria
- 36. 9. STORAGE, HANDLING AND FLAVOR Generally speaking, the aim of good storage and handling is to help PROTECT cheese quality and flavor, and not really improve it, but that is an important reason why it must be done correctly.
- 37. A CHEESE’S JOURNEY Produce Age Wrap Store Cut Wrap Distribute IDEAL CHEESE STORAGE Temperature Humidity 42o F–50o F 70%–80% Cheese Cafe
- 38. PROPER CHEESE STORAGE The goal is to keep cheese at the peak of flavor. Storage and handling practices should mimic the cheesemaker’s ripening room to help the cheese RECOVER from the traumas experienced during shipping Since natural cheese is a living food, with proper HANDLING it usually can be coaxed back to its full flavor potential.
- 39. THE AFFINEUR Until recently a European practice, affineurs are now starting to appear in the U.S. A skilled affineur can bring a cheese to the PEAK of flavor just before sale A cheese professional SKILLED in ripening practices
- 40. THE CHEESEMAKER’S ART The cheesemaker creates and manages an ECOSYSTEM of living microorganisms and their byproducts. His or her SKILL in managing the process is ultimately the single most important factor determining cheese quality and flavor.
Editor's Notes
- We are going to watch a short video demonstrating how fresh and dry jack are made at the Vella Cheese Company in Sonoma. It will help you follow when we dive into the vat to take a close look at how flavor gets in cheese. As Lynne so ably explained, knowing the qualities of their milk, Cheesemakers then must decide what kind of cheese to make, their cheesemaking vision. All other choices follow from that first choice. But some choices are more important to flavor than others and the choice of starter culture may be the most important of all because it determines complexity.
- What is Starter Culture? It is a soup of many different kinds of beneficial, milk-sugar loving, living bacteria and their enzymes. They are carefully selected according to the kind of cheese a cheesemaker wishes to make. All cheeses, except a few fresh varieties, need culture. Through the magic of fermentation, in this case, lactic fermentation, the living culture ferments milk sugar, lactose, into lactic acid, lending cheese its tartness and preserving the life-promoting nutrients of milk. It also releases enzymes that define flavor and texture. How the starter is added to the vat also affects the flavor– if added directly to the vat in frozen or freeze-dried form, it creates consistency; if added as a batch, like sour dough bread, it adds a bit of local flavor to the cheese, a little “terroir.”
- The more building blocks of flavor available in milk, the more potential flavors a cheesemaker has to work with. We call this Complexity. Complexity starts in the vat with the starter culture. A cheesemaker can’t later develop qualities that aren’t there initially. It is a front end loaded process. But more complexity isn’t always better. A fresh cheese or a young cheese need to be simple. It is the cheesemaker’s choice. Either way, To nurture flavor you have to be skilled at managing complexity. Starter culture is alive, and working with it can be unpredictable. Many variables, like the weather are out of a cheesemakers control. To succeed cheesemakers follow a consistent make-process, the steps you take to make the cheese.
- The difference between Starter Culture and Coagulant used in cheesemaking confuses some people. A coagulant is added to the vat around the same time as the starter to separate the gel-like curds from the liquid whey. It adds little to the flavor of cheese, unless too much is added, making cheese bitter. There is also a misconception that animal based rennet is widely used as a coagulant. While a handful of cheeses are still made with animal rennet, most cheesemakers use microbial coagulants.
- How curds develop in the vat shapes the structure of the cheese, determining the flavor and texture. As it says on the slide, “Flavor follows structure.” So lets consider cheese structure for a minute.
- The enzymes released during the fermentation of the milk build a matrix of proteins we call Structure, the essential foundation of any cheese. The structure determines what nutrients will be trapped in the cheese, defining potential flavors and texture. Whether fresh, sweet and moist– pungent, hard and dry, or tart, nutty and crumbly. Traditionally, cheesemakers touched the curd in the vat to judge the progress of a cheese. In today’s sanitary cheese rooms, cheesemakers accomplish the same thing by monitoring the level of acidity in the vat, knowing the exact moment to drain the whey for the cheese he wants to make. This brings up a key point, the moment when the whey is drained from the vat is the defining moment in making cheese– the moment when milk becomes cheese.
- To illustrate the concept of structure we are going to show you some graphic proof that cheese is a living food. If the following slides seem a bit too graphic to you, please remember, they are the naked truth of how great cheese is formed.
- In this first slide, we are seeing the curds right after the whey is drained. We see the protein fibers beginning to form a structure, easy to see in contrast to the plump round bits of butterfat.
- As the bacteria in the culture release their enzymes the proteins change. This is a young feta, already having a clearly defined matrix. Since this is a young cheese, the culture is still quite active. Notice the rod shaped, milk-sugar loving, beneficial, living bacteria trapped in the matrix. Not exactly cuddly, but the flavors they create in cheese make them seem so.
- In this slide you see a fully developed structure, that of an aged gouda, with the fat removed in order to take the picture. Notice how the structure has created spaces to hold the nutrients that make up the flavor and food value of the cheese. As I mentioned earlier, the particular structure of this cheese and all others was determined by the level of acidity when the cheesemaker drained the whey.
- Once the curd is drained, the next step is to add salt. Salt is more than just a seasoning agent in cheese.
- Salt has 3 functions: First, it serves as a preservative, inhibiting the growth of undesirable bacteria. Second, it controls the rate a culture flourishes inside a cheese. And third, it helps control moisture content. Think of salt as a chaperone whose job it is to slow the milk-sugar loving bacteria down so the don’t run out of food during ripening.
- Cheese is salted in one of three ways, or in combination. By adding salt to the fresh curd in the vat right after draining. By rubbing salt on the surface. Or by immersing the cheese in a salt bath called a brine.
- Once the wheel is salted we move from the cheeseroom to the aging room. Our cheesemaker next creates the type of rind the cheese will have. Rind is important to flavor. The rind controls moisture loss during ripening and, if eaten with the body of the cheese, it can have a profound influence on flavor.
- There are four types of cheese rinds: Rindless Natural Smooth And Surface Ripened. We will be tasting an example of each type as we discuss… (set up tasting)
- At the risk of stating the obvious, rindless cheese is cheese without a rind. They include most fresh cheeses, most blue cheeses as well as a cheddar or jack that is vacuum sealed in plastic. Since there is no rind the affect on flavor is neutral. To head off a confusion, sealing in plastic doesn’t stop flavor development. It changes it subtly though as it continues to ripen in a vacuum. When wrapped in foil, as in blue cheese or in a tub, like fresh cheese, or sealed in plastic, the wrapping takes the place of a rind to seal in moisture and keep unfriendlies out. Lynne, what will we be tasting?
- Natural rinds seal in moisture and flavor and keep unfriendlies out by working in harmony with nature rather than acting as a barrier. Many cheeses sport natural rinds. A common form is a natural rind cheddar. The rind is formed most often by rubbing the surface with fat, encouraging molds in the ripening room to colonize the surface of the cheese, sealing the cheese and creating the rind. To anticipate a possible question, the bandage in bandaged wrap cheeses is not about the rind, its about holding a larger wheel of cheese together so the curds can knit. Lynne, what are we tasting?
- Smooth rind cheeses are similar to Natural Rinds, only the surface of the cheese is kept scrupulously clean by frequent wiping. In the case of Gouda, which is wiped with vinegar, the rind is kept so pristine it is often called a “Perfect Rind.”
- Surface ripened white or bloomy rinds directly affect flavor, especially if eaten with the cheese. White mold spores, cousins to penicillin, are added to the milk with the culture. sprayed on the surface, or allowed to develop naturally in the aging room. Ripened in humid conditions the cheese develops a pillowy white coating which helps ripen the cheese from the outside in. That is why you may notice a softer texture closer to the rind and a firmer one in the center. And what tasty cheese are we going to sample this time, Lynne?
- Surface ripened washed rinds are made by washing the surface of a cheese with whey, brine, wine, beer or spirits. In a humid ripening room this moist surface is colonized by beneficial bacteria and yeasts. It develops a pungent reddish rind which both protects the cheese and profoundly affects the way the cheese ripens. The pungent flavor is quite pronounced if you eat the rind. And much more subtle and nutty if you just eat the body of the cheese. Lynne, what lovely treasure are we going to taste?
- With the choice of a proper rind, the first stage of cheesemaking is complete and it is ready to be ripened. With proper guidance, adolescence leads to maturity, in people and in cheese. In cheese we call this process ripening. The relation of ripening to flavor is often misunderstood.
- Ripening, some call it aging, is an important step in bringing cheese to the peak of flavor, but only if the cheese has the potential for flavor trapped in its structure. Since Cheese is a front end loaded process, success in ripening starts in the vat, and is completed in the ripening room. Because fermentation continues over time in natural cheese, a cheesemaker can manage the environment of the ripening room and turn flavor potential into delicious reality, but he can’t nurture flavors that don’t already exist in the cheese.
- Controlling the ripening environment provides another opportunity to sneak into the cheese a bit more local flavor, a measure of terroir. By • Opening up the ripening room to local influences where allowed • Or ripening different cheeses in the same room • Or creating her own microclimate by cultivating microflora in the ripening room, depending on what local officials will allow. This is a photograph of the ripening room at Marin French Cheese. It has been in use since 1865. The microbes that have developed over time contribute to the special flavors of the cheeses ripened there.
- And now we move from what a cheesemaker does to create flavor in Cheese to what you must do to maintain it. Once a cheesemaker deems their cheese ready it enters the distribution chain. Proper storage and handling throughout this chain will help protect cheese flavor, but not really improve it. To paraphrase the great Chef Auguste Escoffier, the secret to good cooking is to start with good ingredients and not ruin them!
- A cheese goes through many hands on its journey to your tummy. From the dairy, where the cheese is produced, ripened and wrapped [slide] by truck to Distributor [slide] where it is stored, cut, wrapped and distributed to the restaurant, retailer or final user. [slide] Cheeses are kept very cold, by law, so cold, it is at best in a state of suspended animation. For example, the best temperature range for cheese flavor is 42 to 50 degrees, and an average humidity of 70-80%. Much higher temperature and humidity than is allowed during a cheese’s journey. As it lurches from too cold to too warm, it can be traumatized.
- Therefore to keep cheese at its peak, its important to know the best way to store and handle it. And what better way than to mimic the way a cheesemaker keeps his cheese as best you can?
- That completes our presentation, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention affinage, and the Affineur. Until recently only found in Europe, the affineur is a cheese professional skilled in best ripening practice, affinage. More and more we are finding cheesemongers who are practicing affinage in their stores. Buying some cheeses while young, other cheeses already somewhat ripened, and providing the ideal conditions for each cheese to develop its flavor, like a master winemaker. While this contradicts my statement that you can’t improve a cheese in storage, we hope the practice of Affinage continues to grow in California and across the US so I can be proven wrong more regularly.
- We have covered a lot of territory in our exploration of flavor in cheese. Here we again have a picture of Ig Vella, master cheesemaker. He and his fellow cheesemakers are Scientists and Craftsmen who create and manage an ecosystem of living microorganisms and their byproducts. When they do it well they elevate cheesemaking to an artfor. An unskilled cheesemaker may make good cheese one day, mediocre the next, both from the same high quality milk. A master like Ig Vella makes great cheese consistently, every batch, every wheel. All other factors are important, but I want to leave you with the thought that Cheesemaker Skill is the THE most important factor in making consistently great cheese. How cheese is stored during the journey from dairy to consumer can make all the difference. I will now demonstrate a couple of strategies Professionals can use to keep cheese better, and some ways for the consumer. .
- Professionals know that wrapping cheese in plastic for long term storage is not a good idea as it can suffocate the cheese and encourage mold to grow. But consumers can do it if they are going to consume right away. Professionals will unwrap aged cheeses and store in sealed food bins by family of cheese, using a dry paper towel to decrease humidity, or a corner of a wet one to increase it as needed. If keeping for more than a week to a week and a half they rub the surface of all but fresh, washed rind and white rind cheeses with olive or vegetable oil to protect against mold as well, as the mold will consume the easily available fat on the surface and not enter the cheese. It can then just be rubbed off. Each time they cut the cheese, they rub the cut face with a bit of oil. Once in awhile, at least every two weeks, they pop the top of the container to refresh the air, turn the cheese to balance the affect of gravity, and change the paper towel and the container. For consumers we recommend wrapping in wax paper or aluminum foil instead of plastic, and storing in a plastic container and consuming right away. For a more long term storage, or with finer cheese, you can apply some of the professional techniques oultined above as well.