Photo: Foodandmore
Dear Readers, You know that you have been wondering why the taste of cheese changes depending on what music it was exposed to during the aging process. So much more agreeable than wondering who the next president will be or “why the sea is boiling hot,” to quote the prescient Lewis Carroll!
Well, wonder no more. Jason Daley at the Smithsonian has the musical cheese story covered.
The creation of good cheese involves a complex dance between milk and bacteria. In a quite literal sense, playing the right tune while this dance unfolds changes the final product’s taste, a new study shows.
“Denis Balibouse and Cecile Mantovani at Reuters report that hip-hop, for example, gave the cheese an especially funky flavor, while cheese that rocked out to Led Zeppelin or relaxed with Mozart had milder zests.
“Last September, Swiss cheesemaker Beat Wampfler [whose day job is as a veterinarian] and a team of researchers from the Bern University of Arts placed nine 22-pound wheels of Emmental cheese in individual wooden crates in Wampfler’s cheese cellar. Then, for the next six months each cheese was exposed to an endless, 24-hour loop of one song using a mini-transducer, which directed the sound waves directly into the cheese wheels.
“The ‘classical’ cheese mellowed to the sounds of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The ‘rock’ cheese listened to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ An ambient cheese listened to Yello’s ‘Monolith,’ the hip-hop cheese was exposed to A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Jazz (We’ve Got)’ and the techno fromage raved to Vril’s ‘UV.’ A control cheese aged in silence, while three other wheels were exposed to simple high, medium and low frequency tones.
“According to a press release, the cheese was then examined by food technologists from the ZHAW Food Perception Research Group, which concluded that the cheese exposed to music had a milder flavor compared to the non-musical cheese. They also found that the hip-hop cheese had a stronger aroma and stronger flavor than other samples.
“The cheeses were then sampled by a jury of culinary experts during two rounds of a blind taste test. Their results were similar to the research group’s conclusions and the hip-hop cheese came out on top. …
“Michael Harenberg, director of the music program at Bern University of the Arts says he was skeptical of the whole project when Wampfler first approached him. ‘Then we discovered there is a field called sonochemistry that looks at the influences of sound waves, the effect of sound on solid bodies.’
“It turns out that Wampfler was rooting for the hip-hop cheese to win all along. Now, reports Reuters, he and his collaborators want to expose cheese to five to ten different types of hip-hop to see if it has similar effects.”
More here.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
How about that! Always knew that music was important to more than just people!👍
Do you make cheese, Deb? Might be fun to add music.
That would make an interesting project, but I don’t do cheese anymore that requires aging. We don’t have cows now that most of the children are gone. We don’t go through food like we did when four boys were growing up.😄
It’s such a treat to know someone has a farm and knows how to do all the things you do!
Wowsah! Let’s hear it for hip-hop!
Personally I would like to try cheese that has been steeped in the music of Brel, Aznavour, or Piaf.
You might be surprised. 😉
This is a hoot! I have all kinds of questions–could Velveeta be improved this way? What would Pete Seeger cheese taste like? Could all this scientific energy be better spent on finding a cure for cancer? (And along with your “why sea is boiling hot,” I wonder whether pigs have wings . . . .)
Pretty sure pigs have wings. At least in today’s America. Finding a cure for cancer is definitely on my mind, but I suppose that in the strange way science works, it’s possible that researchers who are not looking for a cure for cancer but are interested in music and cheese could nevertheless stumble on something cancer researchers had never thought of, something that would send them in a new and hopeful direction.