117 Fun Facts About Cheese

Which cheese is named for a Somerset village with a cave-filled gorge?

Cheddar takes its name from the Somerset village beside Cheddar Gorge, whose caves kept a steady temperature and humidity for ageing; tradition once required the cheese to be made within 30 miles of Wells Cathedral.

Which blue cheese became the first French cheese granted an appellation d'origine, in 1925?

Roquefort legend has a shepherd abandon his bread and ewe's-milk cheese in a cave to chase a girl, then return to find it veined with mould; it still ripens only in the caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon.

Which English cheese cannot legally be made in the village it is named after?

Only cheese made in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire qualifies; the village of Stilton, where it was originally sold at a coaching inn, is in Cambridgeshire.

Which Sardinian sheep's-milk cheese, ripened by live insect larvae, is illegal to sell?

Casu martzu is left open so that cheese flies lay their eggs in it; the larvae digest its fats until the paste turns soft and creamy, and Sardinians call it unsafe to eat once the maggots have died.

Pule, a rare Serbian cheese from the Zasavica reserve, is made mostly from which animal's milk?

Pule is made mostly from donkey milk: only about 100 jennies at Serbia's Zasavica reserve are milked for it, and roughly 25 litres of milk go into a single kilogram.

Sales of which English cheese rose 23% after the 2005 film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?

Wensleydale is the cheese Wallace names as a favourite in the 1995 short A Close Shave, and the creamery later licensed an official Wallace & Gromit brand.

Which cheese is chased down Cooper's Hill at the annual cheese-rolling?

Double Gloucester, a wheel of about 7 lb, is sent down Cooper's Hill near Brockworth and the first runner to the bottom keeps it; the last official race drew 15,000 people in 2009, and locals have run it unofficially since.

Which grillable cheese must be made in Cyprus to carry its name in the EU?

Halloumi's high melting point lets it be fried or grilled without collapsing; the UK was by far its biggest buyer abroad in 2024.

Under EU rules, feta's sheep's milk may be mixed with up to 30% milk from which other animal?

Goat's milk may make up no more than 30% of feta, the rest being sheep's milk from the same parts of Greece; cow's-milk versions made elsewhere cannot use the name in the EU.

Which Spanish cheese has a zig-zag rind that copies the grass baskets once used to press it?

Manchego was once pressed in bands of plaited esparto grass, which left a zig-zag called the pleita; modern moulds are carved to print the same pattern, so the rind still looks hand-woven.

Marie Harel, a farmer from Normandy, is traditionally credited with creating which soft cheese in 1791?

Camembert is credited to Marie Harel, but what carried it far beyond Normandy was packaging: around 1890 a thin wooden box replaced the bed of straw, so the fragile cheese could finally travel.

Which Dutch city, birthplace of the stroopwafel, still holds a cheese market in front of its old weigh house?

Gouda's cheese was traded in the city, not made there: farmers carted their wheels to the market square, agreed a price by handjeklap, slapping palms with every bid, and had them weighed at the Waag.

Which Dutch cheese, sold as red-waxed balls, keeps so well that it became a favourite on long sea voyages?

Edam hardens with age instead of spoiling, so from the 14th to the 18th century it was the cheese of choice on ships and in distant colonies.

Which mild orange cheese takes its name from the Wisconsin town where it was first made?

Colby, Wisconsin, is where Joseph Steinwand washed his curd in cold water instead of stacking and turning it the usual way, which left a softer, moister and milder cheese.

Which mild white cheese traces back to Franciscan friars at Spanish missions in the 1700s?

Monterey Jack began as the queso del país of California's Franciscan missions; who first sold it is disputed, but land baron David Jacks shipped it under his own name and the label stuck.

Which bright-orange Lille cheese owes its grey rind to deliberately added cheese mites?

Mimolette's pitted grey rind is the work of cheese mites put there on purpose to bore in and deepen the flavour; in 2013 US inspectors held up imports because the wheels carried too many of them.

Which smelly washed-rind cheese originated in the Herve area of what is now Belgium?

Limburger originated around Herve, in the old Duchy of Limburg, now in Belgium; Brevibacterium linens, the same bacterium found on human skin, is smeared on the rind and produces the smell.

Which beer-washed cheese from France's Channel coast did Cranfield University researchers rate the smelliest of 15 in 2004?

Vieux-Boulogne beat 14 rivals in the test, which used an electronic nose; the researchers put its stink down to the beer on the rind reacting with enzymes in the cheese.

Charles Martell's Stinking Bishop cheese takes its name from what?

A variety of pear called Stinking Bishop gave the cheese its name: the rind is washed in perry made from it, and the pear is said to be named after an irascible farmer called Bishop who bred it.

Which Italian blue cheese, named after a town near Milan, is said to have been created around AD 879?

Gorgonzola's blue veins are no accident: makers push metal rods in and out of each wheel so that air can reach the mould inside; the town it is named for lies just outside Milan.

Havarti, renamed in 1952 after the farm where Hanne Nielsen worked, comes from which country?

Denmark won EU protection for the name in 2019 after a four-year campaign, so only Danish dairies may sell Havarti in the EU, even though more than half of the world's supply is made elsewhere.

Jarlsberg, a mild holey cheese named after a manor estate, comes from which Nordic country?

Norway's Jarlsberg had vanished from the market before dairy scientists at its agricultural university rebuilt it in the 1950s from old Swiss-style recipes; the method is still a closely guarded secret.

Mozzarella takes its name from the Italian verb mozzare, which means what?

Mozzarella comes from mozzare, 'to cut off', because the cheesemaker pinches portions off the hot, stretched pasta filata curd by hand to shape each ball.

Burrata, stretched curd filled with cream and cheese scraps, comes from which Italian region?

Puglia's burrata is credited to Lorenzo Bianchino of Andria, who is said to have devised it to use up cream and scraps of mozzarella when snow kept him from getting his milk to town.

Ricotta, whose name means 'recooked', is traditionally made from which leftover of cheesemaking?

Whey left over from other cheeses is heated again to near boiling, so its albumin and globulin proteins clump into a fine, slightly sweet curd.

Which soft Italian cheese is made by thickening cream with acid and heat instead of rennet?

Mascarpone is simply cream set with heat and an acid: no rennet, no starter culture and no ageing, which is why it tastes mild and faintly sweet where most cheeses are tangy.

Despite its name, Philadelphia Cream Cheese was first made in which state?

New York dairyman William Lawrence began making it in the town of Chester in the 1870s; the Philadelphia name was added in 1880 purely as marketing, because that city was known for fine dairy.

Which dish did the Swiss Cheese Union promote as a national dish from the 1930s to sell more cheese?

Fondue was a regional dish of French-speaking Switzerland until the Swiss Cheese Union, a cartel that controlled the country's cheese for decades, marketed it nationwide to shift its surplus.

Which processed cheese brand won the American Medical Association's seal of approval in the 1930s?

Velveeta was invented by Emil Frey to rescue broken wheels of cheese: he melted the scraps and dairy by-products into a smooth block and named it for its velvety texture.

Cheez Whiz was first developed for the British market as an instant sauce for which dish?

Welsh rarebit, cheese sauce on toast, was slow to make from scratch, so Kraft's food scientists bottled a shortcut and launched it in Britain in 1952.

The FTC ordered Kraft to stop implying that each Kraft Singles slice had as much calcium as what?

The ads claimed five ounces of milk went into each slice, implying a glass of milk's worth of calcium; the FTC ruled that misrepresented how much calcium survived processing.

Which emulsifying salt lets American cheese be pasteurised without its fat and protein separating?

Sodium citrate binds the calcium that holds milk proteins together, so melted cheese stays smooth instead of splitting into grease and lumps; two Swiss cheesemakers hit on it in 1911 while melting Emmentaler.

Which hard grating cheese, the staple of cacio e pepe, is mostly produced in Sardinia?

Pecorino Romano fed Rome's legions as a daily ration; by the late 1800s Lazio's flocks could no longer meet demand, so makers moved to Sardinia, which now turns out most of it.

Which pungent Burgundy cheese has its rind washed in Marc de Bourgogne, the local pomace brandy?

Époisses is washed with Marc de Bourgogne as it ripens, which gives its orange rind and powerful smell; production had all but died out by the 1950s until farmers Robert and Simone Berthaut revived it in 1956.

Which cheese, named after a Fribourg town, is the classic choice for French onion soup and croque-monsieur?

Gruyère is named for the town of Gruyères, yet in 2023 a US appeals court ruled that American makers may use the name too, calling 'gruyere' a generic term for a style of cheese.

Scientists found the holes in Emmental depend on microscopic particles of what getting into the milk?

Hay dust that fell into open milking buckets seeds the holes, Agroscope researchers reported in 2015; as sealed milking machines kept the milk cleaner, the holes shrank and began to vanish.

Which melted-cheese dish from the Swiss Alps takes its name from the French word for 'to scrape'?

Raclette comes from racler, to scrape: herders in the canton of Valais set a wheel of cheese beside the fire and scraped the melting layer onto bread or potatoes.

Only two Bries hold PDO status: Brie de Melun and the Brie of which other town?

Brie de Meaux was crowned 'king of cheeses' at the Congress of Vienna, where Talleyrand set Europe's cheeses against each other; it and Brie de Melun won protected status in 1980.

Which brand of foil-wrapped cheese wedges, launched in France in 1921, has a mascot wearing its round boxes as earrings?

Laughing Cow's red cow was drawn by the illustrator Benjamin Rabier, and Léon Bel's wife is said to have had the idea of hanging the brand's round boxes from her ears.

During the Great Fire of London, Samuel Pepys buried his wine and which cheese to save them?

Parmesan, 'my Parmazan cheese' in the diary, went into a garden pit Pepys dug with Sir William Penn; the fire was then stopped at All Hallows Barking, the church at the foot of his lane, so his house never burned.

Which stringy Mexican cheese, also called quesillo, is wound up like a ball of yarn?

Queso Oaxaca is made like mozzarella: the warm curd is stretched into long ribbons and then wound into a ball, which is why it pulls apart in strings; around Oaxaca itself it is sold as quesillo.

Cabrales, a pungent blue cheese aged in mountain caves, comes from which region of northern Spain?

Asturias's Cabrales was once wrapped in damp maple leaves; hygiene rules now put it in green foil, and it still spends two to five months ripening in limestone caves of the Picos de Europa.

Which crumbly English cheese replaced Suffolk cheese in the Royal Navy's rations in the 1700s?

Cheshire won out as a full-milk cheese: Suffolk's farmers were turning their cream into butter for London and making a poorer cheese from the skimmed milk left over.

Which natural colouring gives Red Leicester and yellow American cheese their orange hue?

Annatto, a dye from the seeds of a tropical American tree, lets cheesemakers copy the golden tint that rich summer milk gives naturally; carrot juice did the job before it took over in the 18th century.

Which US president's White House open house served a 1,400 lb block of cheese?

Andrew Jackson let the 1,400 lb gift ripen in the White House for more than a year, then opened the doors in 1837 and the crowd finished it in two hours. The West Wing's 'Big Block of Cheese Day' recalls it.

Which French leader reportedly asked how anyone could govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?

Charles de Gaulle's quip is recorded in Les Mots du Général, a 1962 collection of his sayings; some estimates now credit France with 1,000 or more cheeses, so he was understating the problem.

In the old proverb 'the moon is made of green cheese', what is 'green' usually taken to mean?

Fresh and unripened is the usual reading: a green cheese is a new one, not yet aged. The proverb, in print by 1546, mocks the gullible, like the fool of old tales who takes the moon's reflection for a cheese.

What kind of 7,000-year-old pottery from Poland carries some of the earliest direct evidence of cheesemaking?

Sieves pierced with small holes had long been guessed to be cheese strainers; proof came in 2012, when chemists found milk fat soaked into examples from Kuyavia in Poland.

The oldest preserved cheese ever found lay on 3,600-year-old mummies in which country's Taklamakan Desert?

China's Xiaohe cemetery held clumps of kefir-style cheese on the necks and chests of its mummies, perhaps as food for the afterlife; the desert's dry air kept it from rotting for some 3,600 years.

The 'eyes' in Swiss cheese are bubbles of which gas, released by Propionibacterium?

Carbon dioxide is given off as Propionibacterium ferments lactic acid; the gas gathers into the bubbles that become the eyes, while the propionic acid left behind gives the cheese its nutty, slightly sweet taste.

Which deli 'cheese', despite its name, is a jellied meat terrine that contains no dairy at all?

Head cheese is made by simmering a pig's or calf's head until the stock turns to jelly, then letting the meat set in it as a loaf to be sliced cold.

In Homer's Odyssey, which monster's cave do Odysseus's men find stocked with racks of cheese?

The Cyclops Polyphemus is out with his flocks when they walk in; once home he milks his ewes, curdles half the milk and sets it aside in wicker baskets, a careful dairyman before he turns man-eater.

In which Alpine country did 2,700-year-old droppings from the Hallstatt salt mine show that miners ate blue cheese?

Austria's Hallstatt mine yielded Iron Age droppings so well preserved that a 2021 study could read the DNA of blue-cheese mould and brewer's yeast in them: the miners were fermenting food on purpose.

What was rolled down Cooper's Hill in place of the real cheese at the 2013 cheese-rolling?

A foam replica was used after police warned the 86-year-old cheesemaker that she could be held liable for any injuries; the real cheese was back the following year.

Chymosin, the key enzyme in rennet, curdles milk by cleaving which protein?

Chymosin cleaves kappa-casein, snipping off its charged fragment so the casein micelles lose their mutual repulsion, clump together and trap fat, which is essentially what a curd is.

Most of the enzyme that curdles milk for cheese now comes from which source?

Engineered microbes carrying the cow gene for the enzyme won FDA approval in March 1990, the first such product cleared for American food; cheesemakers switched because it was purer and cheaper than calf rennet.

Fans of which NFL team are famous for wearing wedge-shaped 'cheesehead' hats?

Green Bay Packers fans took up the cheesehead after Ralph Bruno cut the first one from the stuffing of his mother's couch in 1987, turning Illinois fans' taunt for Wisconsinites into a badge of pride.

Taleggio, a washed-rind cheese from Lombardy, gets its rosy crust from regular sponging with what?

Brine is the only thing its makers may put on the rind: the sponging keeps the crust damp, brings out its rosy colour and holds unwanted moulds in check.

Munster cheese comes from the high pastures of which French mountain range, between Alsace and Lorraine?

The Vosges were grazed each summer by herders called marcaires, who drove their cattle up in May and down again in September; the cheese then ripened in the cellars of the monks of Munster.

Why do fresh cheese curds squeak when you bite them?

Elastic protein strands rub against tooth enamel while the curd is still young and springy; the squeak fades within about a day, even in the fridge.

Cheese curds, French fries and gravy make up which dish from Quebec?

Poutine first turned up in rural Quebec snack bars in the late 1950s; in one origin story a Warwick restaurateur warned that mixing curds and fries would make 'une maudite poutine', a damned mess.

Which 1998 bestselling business fable follows two mice and two tiny 'littlepeople' through a maze?

Who Moved My Cheese? sets the mice Sniff and Scurry, who simply run off to find more when the supply runs out, against the little people Hem and Haw, who stay put and sulk.

Which genus of mould produces the blue-green veins in cave-ripened cheeses such as Cabrales?

Penicillium, the same genus that gave the world penicillin, thrives in the cold, damp air of the limestone caves where Cabrales ripens, spreading through the cheese as blue-green veins.

The English word 'cheese' descends from which Latin word?

Cheese comes from Latin caseus, via Old English cīese; behind it lies a conjectured Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to ferment, become sour', and caseus also gives the milk protein casein its name.

In which Dickens ghost story does a man tell the spectre it may be only 'a crumb of cheese'?

A Christmas Carol has Scrooge tell Marley's ghost it may be 'an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese'; Dickens adds that he was joking only to keep down his terror.

In which Monty Python film does a crowd at the Sermon on the Mount mishear 'Blessed are the cheesemakers'?

Life of Brian puts its listeners at the back of the crowd, where 'peacemakers' arrives as 'cheesemakers'; one bystander explains that it plainly refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.

The Greek god Aristaeus, said to have taught mortals to make cheese, was also the patron of keeping which creatures?

Bees were his most famous charge: in Virgil's Georgics his hives die off after he causes Eurydice's death, and he wins new swarms only by sacrificing cattle to make amends.

Which company flew a wheel of cheese into orbit as a joke on a spacecraft test flight in 2010?

SpaceX sealed a wheel of French Le Brouère in a metal barrel that doubled as ballast inside its first Dragon capsule. The stunt was a nod to a famous British comedy sketch.

Which Surrealist painter said cheese melting in the sun inspired his famous soft, drooping watches?

Salvador Dalí told physicist Ilya Prigogine that the limp clocks of The Persistence of Memory owed nothing to Einstein's relativity. The idea came from a ripe French cheese softening in the heat.

Which US president released a vast federal stockpile of surplus 'government cheese' free to the needy?

Ronald Reagan approved the giveaway on 22 December 1981, drawing down reserves built up by years of propping up milk prices. One agriculture official had suggested dumping it all in the ocean.

In which board game are the plastic wedges that slot into each playing piece nicknamed 'cheeses'?

Trivial Pursuit players earn one wedge for each of six categories, then race back to the centre hub. The round playing piece is divided like a pie, so the slices that fill it look like wedges of cheese.

Which cheese-topped snack did maître d' Ignacio Anaya improvise in Piedras Negras, Mexico, in 1943?

Nachos take their name from Anaya's nickname, Nacho, the usual short form of Ignacio. Unable to find the cook, he cut up fried tortillas for a group of American officers' wives and melted cheese on top.

Which children's book series features the 'Cheese Touch', passed on from a mouldy slice at school?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid tells the legend that anyone who touches the rotting cheese on the basketball court is shunned until they pass the curse on. Greg ends the first book claiming he threw it away.

Which British comedy troupe's 1972 'Cheese Shop' sketch is set in a shop with no cheese to sell?

Monty Python's John Cleese plays a customer who asks for cheese after cheese in vain. When the script was first read out, Michael Palin was in such hysterics that he fell to the floor while the others sat unimpressed.

Which of golf's four majors is famous for the cheap pimento cheese sandwiches sold to spectators?

The Masters keeps its food prices famously low, and the pimento cheese sandwich is the best-known item on the menu. Fans noticed at once in 2013 when a new supplier could not match the old recipe.

Which US state is the only one that requires commercial cheese to be made under a licensed cheesemaker?

Wisconsin also runs the only advanced certification for veteran cheesemakers in the United States, modelled on the rigorous standards of European schemes.

A farm in Bjurholm, Sweden, is one of the world's only makers of cheese from which animal's milk?

Moose cheese is made at the Älgens Hus, or Elk House, by Christer and Ulla Johansson, who serve it in the farm's own restaurant.

Which cheese-flavoured snack did Fritos creator Charles Elmer Doolin invent in Texas in 1948?

Cheetos sold so fast that Doolin, unable to distribute them nationally on his own, teamed up with potato chip maker Herman Lay. The partnership led to the 1961 merger that created Frito-Lay.

Khachapuri, a cheese-filled bread often shaped like a boat, is the national dish of which country?

Georgia prizes the bread so highly that economists in Tbilisi track the cost of baking it as a measure of inflation, the khachapuri index. The boat-shaped version from Adjara cradles an egg yolk.

Which Treasure Island character, marooned for three years, is obsessed with the thought of cheese?

Ben Gunn was left behind by shipmates who had failed to find Captain Flint's treasure without the map. He ends the novel with a share of just £1,000 from a hoard of £700,000.

Head cheese, also sold as brawn, contains no dairy at all and is actually what kind of food?

A meat jelly set in its own stock, head cheese was traditionally made by simmering the head of a calf or pig until the liquid turned to gelatine.

Which early US president served guests a macaroni pie, a forerunner of macaroni and cheese, at a state dinner?

Thomas Jefferson put the dish on the table in 1802, having taken a keen interest in extruded pasta. One theory credits his enslaved chef James Hemings with bringing the recipe back from France.

Which pub meal did Britain's Cheese Bureau begin promoting in the 1950s after cheese rationing ended?

Ploughman's lunch sounds ancient, but the name was spread as a sales pitch for a plate of bread, cheese and pickle. The Milk Marketing Board took the campaign nationwide in the 1960s.

Which classic French sauce is made by stirring grated cheese into a white béchamel base?

Mornay may honour the diplomat Philippe de Mornay, who died in 1623. Béchamel had not been devised in his lifetime, so any cheese sauce he knew was a different recipe.

Which syrup-soaked Arab dessert of spun pastry layered with cheese has a famous version from Nablus?

Knafeh is built from shredded kadayif dough over a layer of cheese, then drenched in a sugar syrup called attar. The Nablus version is filled with the city's own brined white cheese, Nabulsi.

Which houseplant is nicknamed the Swiss cheese plant after the natural holes in its mature leaves?

Monstera is thought to take its name from the Latin for monster, after leaves that open up into holes as the plant grows. Botanists still debate what the holes are for.

In the British idiom for two people or things that are utterly different, cheese is paired with what?

Chalk and cheese may look alike at a glance, which is the point of the phrase: the resemblance is only skin-deep. The saying is also used in New Zealand.

In baseball slang, a pitcher praised for throwing 'high cheese' has delivered which type of pitch?

A fastball that is hard to hit is simply cheese, and one that crosses low in the zone is cheese at the knees. Baseball's other food slang includes a can of corn and being in a pickle.

What word, first recorded in the late 1930s, describes a connoisseur or devoted lover of cheese?

Turophile joins a variant of the ancient Greek word for cheese to the ending -phile, meaning lover. An oenophile saves the same devotion for wine.

What French title belongs to the specialist who matures cheeses to their peak before selling them?

Affineur comes from affinage, the French name for the days or years of ripening in which a cheese's texture is transformed and its flavour deepens.

Cornish Yarg, named by spelling its creators' surname backwards, is wrapped in which plant's leaves?

Nettle leaves form an edible rind on a cheese based on a 1615 recipe that farmers Alan and Jenny Gray found in their attic. Yarg is simply Gray reversed.

Which author's 1998 fable Who Moved My Cheese follows two mice and two tiny people in a maze?

Spencer Johnson's parable about coping with change at work had sold almost 30 million copies in 37 languages by 2018. Its mice, Sniff and Scurry, simply move on when the cheese runs out.

The French word fromage traces back to a Latin term for which piece of cheesemaking equipment?

Mould is the meaning of the Latin forma, and medieval writers called cheese shaped in one formaticum. The Italian word formaggio grew from the same root.

Which crank-handled tool, invented in 1982, shaves Tête de Moine cheese into frilly rosettes?

Girolle is the French word for the chanterelle mushroom, which the ruffled shavings resemble. Nicolas Crevoisier built the device from a round wooden plate with a pin through the middle.

On which Jewish festival is it customary to eat dairy foods such as cheesecake and cheese blintzes?

Shavuot is traditionally the day the Torah was given. One rabbinic explanation holds that the Israelites, whose cooking pots all had to be made kosher first, opted for dairy instead.

Which aged Mexican cheese, named after a town in Michoacán, is crumbled over street corn?

Cotija is a finishing cheese in Mexican cooking, crumbled or grated at the last moment over tacos, beans, soups and tostadas.

Despite the cartoon cliché, mice given a choice will pass over cheese for which kind of food?

Sweet foods are what mice go for, and they eat cheese only for lack of anything better. The myth may date from the days before refrigeration, when cheese was stored where mice could easily reach it.

Starter bacteria begin most cheesemaking by turning the natural sugar in milk into which acid?

Lactic acid sours the milk before the curdling enzyme goes in. Bacteria that make nothing else are called homofermentative; other strains also release alcohol, aldehydes and ketones.

Traditional rennet, the enzyme mix that curdles milk, is extracted from which organ of young calves?

The stomach's fourth chamber, the abomasum, supplies it as a by-product of veal production. The enzymes are made there in an inactive form and only switched on by the calf's digestive juices.

Which plant pigment in the feed cows eat gives butter and cow's-milk cheese a natural yellow tint?

Carotene dissolves in milk fat, so richer milk looks yellower: Guernsey cows are known for it. The shade also shifts with what the herd has been eating.

Which bacterium is the reason pregnant women are often advised to avoid soft cheeses such as Brie?

Listeria can grow in soft-ripened cheeses and may reach the unborn baby through the placenta, causing miscarriage or stillbirth even when the mother herself recovers.

An overripe Brie gives off the sharp smell of which gas, made by the same organisms that ripened it?

Ammonia in excess is the sign that a Brie has gone too far. The organisms that ripened it never stop working, so a cheese left too long turns unpleasantly pungent.

Brevibacterium linens, which ripens smelly washed-rind cheeses, also causes odour on which body part?

The feet and the cheese smell alike because the bacterium, present all over human skin, gives off the same sulphur compounds in both places.

The frame of metal wires used to cut curd into small pieces is named after which stringed instrument?

Harp wires slice the curd into small particles so that more liquid drains out, the first step towards the firm texture of Alpine cheeses.

Traditional Alpine cheeses are made in kettles of which metal, compulsory for many protected varieties?

Copper kettles are mandatory for many protected Alpine cheeses, though industrial makers often use stainless steel instead.

Under US federal rules, which kind of cheese must be aged for at least 60 days before sale?

Raw-milk cheese must be held for at least 60 days at 35°F or warmer, a wait once presumed to make it safe. The rule keeps young unpasteurised cheeses off American shelves.

Which plant fibre is added as a fine powder to packaged cheese to stop it caking in the pack?

Cellulose is the main structural fibre of plant cell walls, and the industrial supply is refined mostly from wood pulp and cotton.

Pasta filata cheeses such as provolone become stringy when the curd is kneaded and stretched in what?

Hot water softens the new curd until it can be kneaded and pulled into long fibres. The Italian name for the technique means spun paste.

Which enzyme, added during cheesemaking, gives provolone piccante its distinctive sharp, piquant taste?

Lipase strips fatty acids from the milk fat, and those acids carry the bite. The mild version, provolone dolce, is made with a calf's form of the same enzyme instead.

Aged hard cheeses are rich in umami, the savoury taste produced chiefly by which amino acid?

Glutamate was first turned into a seasoning by the chemist Kikunae Ikeda, whose invention went on sale in 1909 under the brand name Ajinomoto and is known to cooks today as MSG.

What do cheesemakers call a Swiss-type cheese that has ripened without developing its characteristic holes?

Blind makes sense because the holes are known as eyes. The larger the eyes, the longer the bacteria have worked and the stronger the flavour, though big ones tear in slicing machines.

Portugal's Serra da Estrela cheese is curdled not with animal rennet but with an extract of which plant?

Cardoon flowers have pistils that act as a vegetable rennet, and in Portugal the traditional curd relies on them entirely. Spain's Torta del Casar is set the same way.

Which pungent fatty acid found in well-aged grating cheese is also present in human vomit?

Butyric acid is named after the Greek word for butter, the food in which the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul first detected it in 1814.

Which term describes the cheese starter bacteria that grow best at moderate temperatures of 20 to 45°C?

Mesophiles like much the same warmth as the human body, which is why most human pathogens belong to the group too. Their heat-loving cousins are the starters used for cooked Alpine cheeses.

The crunchy crystals found inside long-aged Grana Padano consist mainly of which amino acid?

Tyrosine forms the gritty white specks, along with smaller amounts of leucine and isoleucine. The crystals on the surface of younger cheeses are a different substance, a calcium salt.

Which animal's milk sets so poorly with cattle rennet that a new curdling method was devised in the 1990s?

Camel milk finally formed a proper curd when a French agronomy school researcher added calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. A Mauritanian dairy and the FAO then helped launch a cheese named Caravane.

Chhurpi, among the world's hardest cheeses and sold as a dog chew, comes from which mountain range?

In the Himalayas it is pressed, cut into cubes and hung over a fire until rock hard, then softened in the mouth and chewed like gum. Mountain families eat it as a protein-rich stand-in for vegetables.