Two weeks ago, one of my best friends and ex-cheese comrades, Chelsea, brought our old mentor/boss-lady, the illustrious Kim Martin, into the shop. Neither of them had visited us before, and it was pretty exciting to show them around our little corner of the co-op.
As they were getting ready to leave, Chelsea pulled me aside and silently pointed at a quarter-wheel of aged Gouda on display in the back of the case, tapping the side of it to show me that it was all white.
“It’s not mold,” I announced without skipping a beat. “It’s calcium lactate.”
This is something I actually have to write on the scale label when we wrap wedges of the cheese for sale, because people are inherently put off by a sheet of white on an otherwise butterscotch-orange cheese.
After all, most people are familiar with white, wispy molds growing on the outside of cheese—either as the well-manicured coif of a bloomy-rind cheese or as errant growths on the cut face of half-eaten cheese hunks living in the refrigerator cheese drawer.
But there are other white things that can grow on your cheese, and they are actually desirable: crystals!
You know what I’m referring to if you have bitten into an aged Gouda, Cheddar, or Parmesan and felt that satisfying crunch. You also know it if you’ve sunk your teeth through the sticky orange exterior of a washed-rind cheese and felt a slight grittiness.
People often come into the shop looking for cheeses that have “salt crystals” in them. As you will learn below, there are two “families” of crystals that form in cheese. Only one of those families has anything to do with salt—and those are not usually the ones people go hunting for in a cheese shop. While a cheese might taste salty and have crystals in it, that doesn’t mean the crunchy bits are salt, per se.
The crystals that people really want when they are asking for “salt crystals” are often referred to in the industry as “flavor crystals.” That’s because the sight of these crystals is a sign that you’ve found a flavorful, or fully-developed, cheese.
In fact, cheese crystals don’t have any effect on the way a cheese tastes—they are flavorless and scentless. But they do affect other sensory perceptions of a bite of cheese: sound (crunching), touch (bumpiness or rough texture), and sight (white spots, clusters, or patches).
There are several different types of crystals that grow in or on cheese at different times in the cheese-making or -aging process. They are either going to be the product of mineral (salt) emulsion during cheesemaking or protein breakdown (proteolysis) as the cheese ages.
10 Comments
karaterobot
> 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.
… Cannot form on the outside, presumably.
geetee
How long until cheese makers start adding the crunchy crystals to give the appearance of quality without the actual quality?
borski
Visited Gouda in the Netherlands and learned this. Best cheese I’ve ever had.
shrubble
Costco sells the Coastal cheddar which has a lot of this kind of crystals.
xattt
Tangential, but I recently noticed that natamycin, an antifungal agent, is being used in packages of shredded cheese as a preservative.
I was a little taken aback on seeing it, given that antibiotic stewardship has been pushed so much in the last decade.
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.
niemandhier
Obligatory reference to the excellent book:
The Science of Cheese by Michael H. Tunick.
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!
stevenwoo
I'm now kind of upset at myself that I have thrown out perfectly good Cheddar in the past due to white spots.
dekhn
Cheese crystals are umami. Many of them are glutamate crystals. I am curious if the other amino crystals have a similar flavor profile.
WillPostForFood
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.
joss82
Wait. You’re supposed to throw away the cheese when it gets white? What?
Why?