Cheesemonger's Corner

The Four Ingredients of Cheese 101:

Possibly the most interesting thing about cheese is how much variation can be created from the same four ingredients. Cheese, unless added with additional flavoring (fruit, herbs, etc), is made of only 4 ingredients. These 4 ingredients can be coaxed into thousands of types of cheese that are wildly different in flavor and appearance. Here’s a quick rundown of the big four, and the role each plays: 

Milk: Cheese is basically just milk without water. The purpose of cheesemaking, a.k.a. removing water from milk, is to delay spoilage and preserve the nutrients in milk for future consumption. Milk is mostly made of water, protein, fat, and sugar. Cheesemaking creates conditions where the protein and fat solids in milk can separate from the water, so the fat and protein can become cheese. After this process, a cheesemaker is left with curds, made of mostly fat and protein, and whey, made of mostly water and sugar.

Rennet: Rennet is the tool cheesemakers use to separate water from milk. Renet is an enzyme that changes the chemical bonds in milk so that the protein and fat can separate from the water and sugar. Rennet can come from a variety of sources. It’s usually taken from the stomach lining of a young ruminant animal, like a cow or goat. It can also be found in some plants like thistles, which can be used to coagulate milk. There’s also microbial rennet, which is developed from types of fungi. Rennet derived from plants or fungi is considered the vegetarian alternative to traditional rennet. 

Culture: In the cheese world, “culture” refers to different blends of bacteria that cheesemakers add to create a desired type of cheese. Cultures not only help cultivate certain flavors and texture, but they also help outnumber other undesirable bacteria, which helps preserve the cheese. Different culture blends are added to the cheesemaking process depending on the type of cheese being made.

Salt: Makes cheese tasty, yes, but also very important for food preservation. Salt also affects the pH balance of a cheese, which plays a big part in its evolution into different styles.

By Christy Caye