It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)
233 comments
·March 31, 2025Tade0
EA-3167
Back eventually? I'd personally set up a little tent in the foyer and live there year 'round, like an increasingly portly mouse.
throwaway889900
At that point just call it Redwall Abbey!
Tade0
I would do the same, but that is a particularly expensive diet.
derelicta
Oh my! I do miss these kingdoms of cheese myself! No offence to the British but they don't know what good cheese is :p
ndsipa_pomu
That's fighting talk round my way!
I submit to you that you've not tried the good British cheeses such as a Baron Bigod (Norfolk Brie), a nettle covered Cornish Yarg, the well-named Stinking Bishop, the rolled-in-ashes Kidderton Ash, Yoredale, Yarlington, Stilton, Beauvale, Gorwydd Caerphilly, Driftwood, Pevensey Blue, Witheridge in Hay, Ailsa Craig ...
neuroticnews25
This comment reminds me of Monty Python cheese shop sketch.
a_c
I'm saving this comment just so I know what cheese to try next time
helpfulContrib
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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.
jinushaun
Like adding acid to fake sourdough…
borski
Visited Gouda in the Netherlands and learned this. Best cheese I’ve ever had.
dfxm12
I think when someone thinks of the Platonic ideal orange cheese, they taste aged gouda on their tongue.
kirtakat
It's funny how as soon as I read to Netherlands, my brain back-tracked to correct me on the pronunciation.
If anyone else is ever in the Netherlands and has a chance, due the tour in Gouda, it's delightful and you get to try a bunch of gouda cheese!
borski
I hate that I can’t say the word without saying it right, but that means that everyone else thinks I’m saying it wrong. Haha
Agreed btw, the tour in Gouda is wonderful. Show up for the morning when they have the cheese market; it’s a really fun time.
dkdbejwi383
one of my pet peeves is "Gouda" puns that rely on it being pronounced like "good-er"
jajko
Old aged gouda is the best cheese I ever laid on my tongue. We live in Switzerland next to French border, so there is no end to universe of fine aged original Gruyeres, Beaufort or even Cheddar (but that one probably worse than what one can get in UK), plus all AOC Italian ones. Simply hard cheeses with grain, there are hundreds to choose from.
I love them all, but that gouda taste is something else to me and my wife. French shops just around the border luckily import some of it, I never saw it in Switzerland shops.
One way to upmark any cheese for us to put ie black truffles or wild black garlic in it.
Talking about gouda, gotta get me some slices before kids munch it all again.
clmul
People in the Netherlands are usually not at all proud of their cuisine, but the cheese is definitely a nice aspect (as someone who eats the >1 year ripened stuff almost daily)
Although for me some of the French cheeses are the best. Just what you're used to I guess :D
twic
Have you tried Mimolette? It has a similar character to those very old Goudas.
decimalenough
But the crunchy bits on the outside are cheese mites, not crystals. (Seriously.)
goosejuice
L'amuse will blow the mind. One of the best cheeses out there and I've had hundreds.
Chällerhocker is another great one in your neck of the woods.
goosejuice
Meant to say specifically Wilde Weide. L'amuse sells good cheese in general though.
genewitch
I've had most Dutch cheeses, and my personal favorite is smeerkaas, in the little gold cups.
borski
Same, tbh. I love cheese. But that aged Gouda is absolutely memorable. I can literally taste it now haha
geetee
How long until cheese makers start adding the crunchy crystals to give the appearance of quality without the actual quality?
IneffablePigeon
This happens already, at least it does in the UK. Most cheaper brands of “extra mature” supermarket cheddar have added crystals. I don’t actually mind that much - I do think it is a genuinely slightly more enjoyable product with the crystals.
jb1991
There are also fake ways of accelerating aging to create this effect, like the Old Amsterdam cheeses you’ll find in the Netherlands. That particular brand has a lot of fake qualities to it that creates these effects.
facile3232
Is "fake" really the right word here if people get the flavor, nutrition, and texture they want? I don't really give a damn if they figured out a way to bypass aging to achieve this.
geetee
Is this something they disclose on the packaging? I'm curious how to identify this in the cheese I buy.
borski
Aside from cheddar (or similar), the crystals are always inside the cheese, so the appearance is nearly the same as those without the crystals.
dekhn
Cheese crystals are umami. Many of them are glutamate crystals. I am curious if the other amino crystals have a similar flavor profile.
jsbg
In the sense that they contribute to umami taste, yes. But most commonly the nucleotides inosinate (from meat and fish) and guanylate (from dried mushrooms) are the other molecules that provide umami flavors.
facile3232
Also MSG, obviously.
sophacles
The G in MSG is glutamate, so not an "also"... as its been covered by OP.
rbrownmh
The umami flavor of cheese, especially hard cheeses, is incredibly under appreciated. And I'll never understand the popularity of pre-shredded cheese...
dekhn
Umami is a lot more present that people recognize. I've built up an intuition for this over the years, and also sort of trained my tongue.
What we call umami is a subjective experience that has an underlying molecular cause, but it's complicated: more than one molecule contributes to the sensation, different foods have different molecules, many people can't recognize it on its own, etc.
The most easily recognized umami tastes seem to come from hydrolyzed soy protein and yeast extracts- both are added to tons of food. The canonical example is Doritos, which are a masterpiece of modern food industrial optimization. Doritos are mostly corn, but they also add whey (cheese derived umami), MSG (molecular, isolated glutamate in salt form), buttermilk (multiple flavors including umami), romano cheese (more umami!), tomato powder (umami), inositate (umami). It's basically an umami bomb.
From what I can tell, the best umami flavors come from a combination of several different molecules combined with some salt. the combination seems to potentiate the flavor significantly. You can also saturate out your receptors- if you drink a highly concentrated broth, you'll see there's some upper limit to the amount of umami you can taste and after that, additional aminos are just wasted.
Cthulhu_
> I'll never understand the popularity of pre-shredded cheese...
If spending too much time in eve online taught me anything, it's that convenience is worth money. People are inherently lazy, and there's plenty of ways to exploit that.
The next level of pre-grated cheese is frozen pizza, for example.
Lutger
Its not laziness, its just a matter of priority. Like playing eve online, or doing nothing.
But really, there is what feels like an ever increasing list of 'stuff to do, things to attend', and preparing food (and sleep) are obvious time sinks to reduce, and of course people are willing and increasingly able to pay.
A recent survey (forget the link, sorry), listed time spend on food preparation / cooking nowadays as averaging out on just 28 minutes daily. Around 1980, this was still around 2.5 hours. I believe context is UK.
I easily spend 3 hours daily, because especially with a little kid I just think it is important to do, but I do also feel the weight of it.
frereubu
Me either, but a relative who worked in processed foods told me the reason it exists isn't just lazy consumers, it's made from the oddly-shaped (by supermarket standards) offcuts that they can't sell otherwise.
NikkiA
This thread makes me realise I must be the only person on earth that detests the taste of the crystals.
crossroadsguy
And that I am the person who discards it trying not to hold with bare fingers whenever anything starts growing on any food item including cheese (which is a rare usage thing for me anyway; or maybe in my region; we use different kinds of cheese though, mostly consumed fresh).
shrubble
Costco sells the Coastal cheddar which has a lot of this kind of crystals.
stevenwoo
The Kirkland blocks of sharp cheddar can also have these on the outside.
stevenwoo
I'm now kind of upset at myself that I have thrown out perfectly good Cheddar in the past due to white spots.
coldpie
For firm & hard cheeses, the bad molds very rarely penetrate the surface. If you get some questionable looking mold on the outer surface, you can cut off the outer couple of mm and enjoy the remainder just fine. For rustic/home made cheeses, handling the "bad" mold on the outer surface is a normal part of the aging process before it makes it to the customer anyway. https://cheesemaking.com/blogs/learn/how-to-bandaging-chedda...
zahlman
The USDA says to cut off at least an inch and be careful not to cut through mold: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and...
ahartmetz
Also, if you get bright white(!) spots on cheese like Brie (which is made with white fungus), it's usually just the cheese "reactivating". You - theoretically - don't even need to cut off anything.
GuB-42
I remember having a brie-like cheese cut in half and left forgotten in the fridge for more than a month. The mold had reformed completely, as if it they were made like this in the first place.
It tasted fine, no one got sick. Kind of underwhelming to be honest, but it wasn't particularly tasty to begin with: industrial cheese, pasteurized milk. It fact, that it still had some life in it surprised me.
ahartmetz
Fun! I've never let it come that far. Was it somehow fuzzy or really like the firm, white skin that it has when you buy it?
kjkjadksj
I’ve eaten brie weeks after sell by date. It just turns into a firmer cheese by then no striking difference in taste really.
ahartmetz
Yeah, not much seems to happen to Brie - it stays fairly mild. Unlike Camembert, which gets significantly stronger and runnier over time.
thaumasiotes
> It just turns into a firmer cheese by then
Really? I thought it was the other way around, starting relatively firm and liquefying as it rots.
tacitusarc
No, that is most likely mold. Not all white spots are positive, especially if they are on old cheese in the fridge (as per the article).
stevenwoo
It does give a method of testing at home at the end, though, with hard being crystal and soft being mold.
GuB-42
Even if it is mold, just remove it off the surface. It doesn't penetrate far on hard cheeses like Gouda.
Also the reason why I don't buy pre-grated cheese, it doesn't age well. It also tends to be lower quality to begin with.
sphars
I actually did this yesterday to a block of cheese and now I regret it
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!
7speter
Was proud I planned out buying a couple of pounds of cheddar from the supermarket and keeping it in our spare fridge for a year and had aged cheddar for Thanksgiving baked mac and cheese last November.
floren
If you're ever in Pullman, Washington, stop in at the WSU dairy store and get a few cans of Cougar Gold cheddar. Cheese in a can sounds weird, but it's delicious, made by the students, and it ages really well -- I've got some cans in my fridge which are coming up on a decade old now. It's kind of a waste to use an aged can for mac and cheese, but I used part of a younger can for mac & cheese and it came out beautifully.
psunavy03
As a Penn State grad I feel like WSU and PSU need to have a creamery-off for charity or something.
globular-toast
Whenever I keep mild or medium cheddar too long it goes "mature" before long, but it doesn't taste good. French cheese, on the other hand, matures (affines) quite nicely at home.
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.
borski
Correct.
talkingtab
It seems wrong to me that most of what people now call cheese is not at all like what I think of as "real cheese". I have ended up making cheese and it is both fascinating, productive and tasty. While there are many "recipes" for cheeses, they are mainly focused on preparing the cheese for aging. These are often techniques, like washing the curd (gouda) or cheddaring (cheddar).
The aging part takes more work. I converted a 7.5 CU refrigerator using an Inkbird temp controller. That works surprisingly well. Currently I'm attempting to improve the humidity control with a humidity version of the Inkbird.
But highly recommended. I have everything I made (even the failures) with the exception of one of the first attempts.
anamexis
What do you think of as "real cheese"?
talkingtab
In Europe, and at gourmet cheese stores, you get a slice from a wheel. It is alive, in the sense that it has not been "treated" to increase shelf life. A wheel of cheese is like a little biome or green house or garden in a bottle. The rind of the cheese is the wall. It allows the cheese to breathe, but in a way that preserves the life inside it. Once the wheel is cut, the bottle is broken, and while the cheese can be kept for a time, it will start to degrade. The humidity (~80-85 %) is important so the cheese does not dry out and it does not become a nice home for unwanted mold, bacteria and fungus. The temp of ~55 F is also important so that the little things can live but don't start over growing.
If it comes from a wheel where it was aged, almost any cheese is good - depending on your particular taste. The aged ones with crystals are great, especially Dutch ones, but "local" cheese is almost always wonderful.
I was in Colby, Wisconsin a couple of times and I found the local Colby cheese to be good. Many locally made cheese are good, but again if they are bagged in plastic then they do not compare with the "real" thing.
anamexis
While I don't doubt that getting fresh cheese cut from the wheel is optimal, cheese bagged in plastic hasn't been "treated" to increase shelf life besides being put in plastic - which presumably also preserves the cheese at its existing humidity.
It's not like the act of putting cheese in plastic instantaneously alters it.
brundolf
Until early adulthood the only cheese I really knew was kraft slices, kraft parmesan powder, bags of pre-shredded, etc. Literally buying cheese by the block turned my world upside down
dekhn
There's a whole concept of "farmer's cheese"- quickly prepared from pressing whey, minimal preservation- intended for nearly immediate consumption. Cottage cheese, queso fresco, paneer, ricotta, are all examples... then of course you have brined cheeses... feta, etc...
xandrius
These "most" people might be country specific.
I make cheese myself (both fresh and year-long aged ones) and virtually all the people I met knew what real cheese was.
If it is the "ultra-processed" cheese what you are referring to, that might not be liked by some but that's still cheese, regardless of its plastic-y feel.
eric-hu
Thank you for sharing your experience!
This is something I’ve been curious about. Can you speak more about how you got into it? What kind of research did you do before getting started? Did you know anyone else who had done it before you got into it?
khazhoux
> It seems wrong to me that most of what people now call cheese is not at all like what I think of as "real cheese"
Not sure at all what you’re referring to. Surely it’s not “american cheese”, which has been the punchline of obvious cheese jokes for decades. Or the powder in mac & cheese boxes, which is its own thing.
From where I stand, I see grocery stores in the USA stocking large varieties of cheddars, fontina, gouda… all “real cheese.”
globular-toast
In the USA the main problem is everything has to be pasteurised which rules out many "real" cheeses like camembert.
null
I spent a couple of months in Switzerland for a project and supermarkets there often have this booth that me and my friends referred to as the "Kingdom of Cheese".
The Kingdom of Cheese is a climate-controlled enclave with just cheese - the person there is happy to help you decide because they know you'll be back eventually as indeed the products there have those crystals.