Posted by ilikepi 3/31/2025
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.
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 ...
There is some gray area in that they affect the texture, which is a part of the whole experience. But that's again mostly signaling--we like the crunch because we associate it with good cheeses, not because there's anything inherently better about it.
There are some interesting philosophical questions here. If you put a fake label on some wine, and people perceive it as higher quality than it is, is it really fake? On one hand, obviously yes. And yet there was a real effect on the perceived quality.
That seems hard to believe, frankly.
The synthetically aged stuff is still plenty delicious but when naturally aged cheese isn't really more expensive (just harder to find) I fail to see the point.
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.
Although for me some of the French cheeses are the best. Just what you're used to I guess :D
Chällerhocker is another great one in your neck of the woods.
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!
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.
Side note: it's really funny if you think about it, umami is basically just the taste of amino acids and nucleic acids, which presumably makes sense since the body uses them so much (beyond just making protein and DNA/RNA).
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Really? I thought it was the other way around, starting relatively firm and liquefying as it rots.
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.