Swiss cheese

Swiss cheese is a generic name in North America for several related varieties of cheese, mainly of North American manufacture, which resemble Emmental cheese, a yellow, medium-hard cheese that originated in the area around Emmental, in Switzerland. Some types of Swiss cheese have a distinctive appearance, as the blocks of the cheese are riddled with holes known as "eyes". Swiss cheese without eyes is known as "blind". (The term is applied to cheeses of this style made outside Switzerland, such as Jarlsberg cheese, which originates in Norway).

Production

Three types of bacteria are used in the production of Emmental cheese: Streptococcus salivarius subspecies thermophilus, Lactobacillus (Lactobacillus helveticus or Lactobacillus delbrueckii subspecies bulgaricus), and Propionibacterium (Propionibacterium freudenreichii subspecies shermani). In a late stage of cheese production, the propionibacteria consume the lactic acid excreted by the other bacteria and release acetate, propionic acid, and carbon dioxide gas. The carbon dioxide slowly forms the bubbles that develop the "eyes". The acetate and propionic acid give Swiss its nutty and sweet flavor. A hypothesis proposed by Swiss researchers in 2015 notes that particulate matter may also play a role in the holes' development and that modern sanitation eliminated debris such as hay dust in the milk played a role in reduced hole size in Swiss cheeses, or even "blind cheese". Historically, the holes were seen as a sign of imperfection and cheese makers originally tried to avoid them by pressing during production. In modern times, the holes have become an identifier of the cheese.

Swiss cheese (disambiguation)

Swiss cheese, in American English, is a large family of holey cheeses.

Swiss cheese may also refer to:

Cheese

Other uses

Swiss cheese (mathematics)

In mathematics, a Swiss cheese is a compact subset of the complex plane obtained by removing from a closed disc some countable union of open discs. More generally, a Swiss cheese may be all or part of Euclidean space Rⁿ– or of an even more complicated manifold – with "holes" in it.

References