Ever wonder about the whitish spots of crunch in your cheese? People have a wide variety of theories on those little crystalline bits. No, it's not salt, it's not something deliberately added during cheesemaking, it's not that the cheese is old and it's starting to dry out, and it's not a cheese mite.
Today we're setting the record straight in a big reveal of the little known component in some of your favorite cheeses.
Those bits are called tyrosine, and they're actually amino acid clusters that form with age. Tyrosine clusters are signs of a well-aged cheese, which is why you'll find them in some of the world's most loved cheeses like Parmigiano Reggiano, aged goudas, and mountain cheeses like gruyere or Pleasant Ridge Reserve.
Tyrosine is a non-essential amino acid found mainly in casein, the dominant protein found in milk. The word itself is from the Greek tyros, meaning cheese. What's most fascinating (from a dorky cheese fanatic perspective) is the reason that these protein clusters form.
When cheese is made, fats and proteins are trapped within chains of proteins that have bonded together during acidification. Groupings of these fats and proteins make up the solids, or curds, that form cheese. When cheese spends a long time aging, these protein chains begin to unravel, leaving small, crunchy deposits behind.
Tyrosine lends a distinctive textural charm to cheese, and is a welcome interruption within the body of an otherwise smooth paste. And sometimes it even compliments the beverage you may be drinking with your cheese, as in the case of pairing a full-bodied stout with a super-aged cheddar; the crunchiness of the cheese somehow matches the fullness of the beer by contributing its own textural intensity.
Tyrosine is not to be confused with the crunchiness you can find in some washed-rind cheeses. Since this category of cheese is usually washed in some kind of salt water brine, residual salt crystals are often left behind on the crust of these cheeses. When you take a bite of rind and inner paste together, the crunchiness from the outside can be mistaken for existing on the inside.
Now go and impress your cheese-loving friends with your new vocabulary word!
(image: Flickr.com)
© 2010 Apartment Therapy
Thanks! Lately I've been buying some Irish cheddar and really wondered what those little crunchies were; my least worrisome assumption was salt.
view acushla's profile
Fascinating. Thanks for the lesson! : )
view Farmgirl Susan's profile
The tyrosine is one of the reasons I love Robusto cheese (especially more mature versions) so much. Yay for tyrosine!
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They were just talking about this in the latest Splendid Table radio show, doing a scientific analysis of the flavor of Parmagiano Reggiano. I love food science info like that!
view SisterRae's profile
I was just staring at some gruyere and wondering what was going on with the white bits. Thanks for the tip!
view small clever rooms's profile
Great article, good information...very interesting! I'm a student employee in marketing at the Washington State University Creamery. Our Cougar Gold Cheese is a world renown gourmet cheddar. In 2006 it won a gold medal at the World Cheese Awards!
I deal with customer's who ask, love or complain about the "crunch" in our cheese when it is aged past two years (sometimes it is found in our 1-year aged Gold). I have known about Tyrosine Crystals, but this article expanded on the scientific approach. On our cheese the "white" powder or residue on the outside of the cheese is calcium lactate. As cheese ages it emits moisture (whey and butterfat) which drys on the cheese...leaving the white powder. In turn, the cheese becomes more sharp, flavorful, dry and crumbly. Our cheese comes vacuum sealed in a can and lasts indefinitely. One customer even contacted us who had aged the cheese around 35 years!
We recently got to open a can of cheese that was 30 years old! We documented the opening with a video camera and I'm currently working to edit it into a movie. We will post it to our website in the near future if anyone is interested.
We are a nonprofit entity...students produce, market and sell our dairy products! You can find us here: http://www.wsu.edu/creamery/.
And here is the article about the 30 year old cheese: http://cahnrsnews.wsu.edu/reportertools/news/2007/old-cheese-2007-09.html.
I enjoyed your article. Great job!
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I also forgot to add we use a special culture that doesn't allow our cheese to produce a "bitter" taste as it ages!
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