Serving Up Science

- Have you ever noticed certain cheeses smell, well, really bad?

I'm Sheril Kirshenbaum, and on this episode of Serving Up Science, we're going to explore the bacteria behind the phenomenon of stinky cheese, while making the ultimate cheese board.

You get a twofer.

From a strictly chemical perspective, there are similarities between the strains of bacteria behind some cheeses and BO.

B. epidermis bacteria is found on sweaty regions of our bodies, like belly buttons, armpits, feet, and even the, mm, groin.

(buzzer beeps) In fact, you can even make stinky cheese using the bacteria living on our bodies.

It's been done, but we're not gonna do that here today.

B. linens bacteria live on the skin of washed rind cheeses, and if you're wondering, a washed rind cheese is any cheese that has had a solution of salts or alcohol rubbed on it, and washing the rind leads to that notorious funky odor that we tend to describe as similar to stinky feet and barnyard animals, not necessarily the scents that we'd initially guess could also be delicious.

Joining me in the kitchen today, we have Tessie Ives-Wilson, one of only 740 certified cheese professionals in the entire world.

Tessie, welcome to Serving Up Science.

What exactly is a cheese professional?

- So the certified cheese professionals are a group of people who have dedicated themselves to learning about cheese production, so we study everything from the effect that feed and hay and grass have on milk production in animals all the way up through designing the ultimate cheese board (harp glissando) - I'm so excited you're here.

I have a celebrity in my house.

So tell us the basics of what we need to know to make a perfect cheese board.

- Definitely, so I brought today a couple of my favorite cheeses, but they all fall into a couple really neat categories.

Something old, something new, something stinky, and something blue.

And we're gonna focus on the stinky cheeses today while we build our ultimate cheese board.

So drunk monks bring us some of the most tasty things in history, and washed rind cheeses are no exception.

One day, a young monk was in the cheese room turning the cheeses that they made on site, and he dropped a cheese by accident into his cup of beer.

So after fishing it back out of his beer, three weeks later, he had a beautiful cheese that looked and smelled completely different from everything else in the room.

- I believe that's the kind of thing Bob Ross used to call happy accidents.

- Definitely.

- The first cheese on our board is our old cheese, Manchego.

Would you mind if you missed a piece?

- I wouldn't mind.

- (deep voice) Whoa.

- One of the stinky cheeses that I brought with me today is a really lovely Muenster.

So when you're tasting this, the thing to remember is that the rind is gonna be the really intense part of this, but the interior of the cheese should be really creamy and have some beefy bacony notes that come from the influence of the bacteria.

- (deep voice) Wow.

- Not what you expected?

- No, I mean, how does something that tastes so good smell so disgusting?

- So the smell comes from the bacteria breaking down the milk on the inside of the cheese, but in our mouths, those flavors go up the back of our palate, and science now tells us that that's called reverse tasting, where things that if we smell them at our nose smell really bad, but once we smell them through the back of our mouths, taste really great.

- Wow, it's so interesting because from an evolutionary perspective, we have a natural aversion to bad smells because they warn us to stay away from stuff that can make us sick.

Not so with stinky cheese.

The second step is adding our stinky cheese, Washtenaw.

- Stinky cheeses are generally cheeses that have that soft, moist, particularly orange, rind on the outside.

Other cheeses, like our blue cheese, are going to be described as stinky, but those aromas and flavors come from molds that grow on the inside of the cheese instead of the bacteria on the outside.

- Next up, we have our new cheese, the City Goat.

- Rinds on soft cheeses and soft washed rind cheeses especially add flavor and texture to the cheese experience.

- Our fourth cheese on the board is another stinky variety, Brabander.

- So by adding different milk types and textures on a cheese board, that's part of what adds both visual and taste interest to a board.

- I notice you cut off the rind.

I just pop the whole thing in my mouth.

Was I eating cheese wrong?

- There is no wrong way to eat cheese, Sheril, but you weren't wrong in that.

My general rule of thumb is if it doesn't add to your enjoyment of the cheese, it's not a rind you should eat.

There are, of course, exceptions, like a wax rind on our blue that we've got today, that while they aren't going to hurt you, aren't really great food, so I tend to avoid them.

- Okay, well, on soft cheeses, I'm a rind girl.

Our final cheese on the board is our blue cheese, Kentucky Blue.

Okay, so if I got this right at this point, we have something old, something new, something stinky, and something blue.

- Definitely.

And to that, I like to fill in all of the gaps on my board with dried fruit, nuts.

I've brought some really lovely young peppers, and those all add pairing options along with our cheeses, and let us have different experiences with each bite of cheese.

- Cheers to cheese!

- Cheers to happy accidents.