I realize this is one of those ‘too stupid to ask’ questions, but it’s plagued me for quite some time, and my mother recently brought it up as we munched on muenster and butterkase and swiss on our way back from Wisconsin.
Cheese is a pretty basic thing. Cow or goat’s milk, right? Curds and whey, aging process, packing process, nothing really added but some salt I think, right? So how do two drastically different cheese like, say brie and sharp cheddar come into being without the addition of further ingredients? I understand some obvious thinks like pepper jack and herb cheeses have additions, but how can there be so many varieties from such basic elements?
Be easy on me, I was a theatre major. I only know the ‘motivations’ of cheese.
Apparently for the small-scale (blessed)cheesemaker, the problem is making the same cheese twice; because it is a living, cultured product, the storage conditions make a big difference to the way that the flavour develops and the natural variability of the raw ingredients makes this even more likely.
…plus of course differences in the method of manufacture; soft cheeses like Brie have not been pressed as much (to dry the curds), blue cheeses like stilton have been inoculated with special mould cultures (as indeed has Brie and Bamenbert, but only on the outside in those cases) - Brie needs to be stored in a more humid environment than hard cheeses, so that the skin can grow properly.
…and the flavour of hard cheese deepens the longer it is stored/matured.
does that account for the color changes as well?
Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
Well, sadly, the deep orange and yellow colour of some cheeses is simply the result of food dyes, but the colour of cheese can be influenced by the milk and by the bacteria that cause the maturing process.
I could swear that I posted this information very thoroughly in a previous thread, but I can’t find it on search. Here goes:
There are many factors that affect the flavor of cheese: whether the milk is cooked or not, whether mold is added and what kind, the pH of the whey, the type of feed the cows or goats ate, the fat content of the milk, how long and under what conditions the cheese is aged, how much rennet is used, stirring, filtering, pressing, skimming, washing, and added ingredients.
And yes, aging in particular will deepen the color of cheese (although the orange cheeses are artificially colored).