The Ultimate Cheese Primer: Understand the Differences Between the Main Types of Cheese
If you've ever walked into a cheese shop and been completely giddy but also overwhelmed, we're here to help. There's a wide, wide world of cheeses out there that can be broken down in countless ways: by milk type, amount of aging, country of origin, and so on. And while there's no singular formula for composing the ultimate, show stopping cheese plate, keeping in mind the various factors that differentiate cheese can help give you a starting point.
One way to categorize cheese is as fresh, semi-soft, semi-hard, hard, and blue. This offers a snapshot of the various textures, ages, and styles. But what accounts for these differences in cheese types? According to Elizabeth Chubbuck, SVP of sales at Murray's Cheese, milk source (cow, goat, sheep) of course comes into play, but what it really comes down to is moisture and aging. "The difference between a camembert and a Parmigiano Reggiano—a soft cheese and a very hard cheese—has everything to do with how much moisture is left in the curds during the cheese making process combined with the amount of time the final product is aged," she explains.
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All cheese begins the same way: with milk. As Chubbuck explains, "you take milk, you add starter cultures, which is like lactic acid, you add mold spores that begin to break down the proteins and then you add rennet. Rennet completely manipulates the protein structure; from a visual perspective when the rennet is added the milk slowly transforms from a liquid into a big block of milk Jell-O. That big block of milk Jell-O is the basic building block for every cheese that exists."
When a soft cheese like camembert is being made, it would be removed at this point so the weight of the curd could press out additional moisture while it ages but the texture would remain supple. If you're making a hard cheese, the blocks of "milk Jell-O" are cut down those into rice-sized grains and drained of whey to strip even more moisture from the cheese. Then, as the cheese ages (in the case of Parmigiano-Reggiano it must be aged at least 24 months), additional moisture leaves the cheese so it gets harder and harder.
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Composing a cheese board can be a bit of a Rubik's cube. Chubbuck suggests taking into account factors like time of year (yes, cheese can have a seasonal vibe), and how large the gathering is, and how adventurous your guests are, then choosing cheeses that offer a variety of ages, textures, treatments (smoked or wrapped in a leaf, for example), milk types, pungency, shapes, and even color (blue cheese, she says, is great for adding a pop of color). She suggests starting with one "wow" cheese that anchors the board and working from there.
If you opt for a traditional cheese board, Chubbuck says that at Murray's they find an odd number of cheeses to be most aesthetically pleasing. However, she's also fond of the grazing board trend. "As somebody who has worked in cheese for a decade and entertained with cheese even longer than that, the one thing I know is that people are not confident in front of a cheese board," she notes. "You get them in front of a cheese board with chunks of cheese and they'll, like, shuffle and make awkward eye contact and not dive in." A grazing table, where everything is laid out and pre-cut, can offer a much more approachable alternative.
No matter how you cut it, knowing your way around the basics of different cheese types is a simple way to build a better cheese board and sound like a connoisseur. Keep an eye out for the rest of this series, where we'll dive a little deeper into the characteristics of each cheese type, as well as essential tools to up your cheese game.
