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| Here's Mental Floss trying to answer the important questions, again. One of the most recognizable cheeses is the Swiss variety. Well, that's what we call it in the US. Which would be kind of like calling cheddar "English cheese" or brie "French cheese," ignoring all the other glorious cheeses produced by those countries. But it's too late; "Swiss cheese" is a metaphor-turned-cliché, and there's no going back now. Even if you don’t know the taste, you’re likely familiar with the distinctive appearance characterized by an abundance of holes, also known as “eyes.” That's because it's also a trope. That is, when a cartoonist wants to draw "cheese," they will always draw Swiss because the well-known holes instantly say "cheese" like a portrait photographer's subject. Without these iconic features, you're just drawing a wedge or wheel or slice of some unidentifiable substance. According to U.S. Dairy, a farmer-funded trade group, the eyes in Swiss cheese derive from a genus of bacteria often found in raw milk called Propionibacteria, or Props. All cheese relies on microorganisms. Well, anything that actually deserves the name "cheese," anyway. This is not gross unless you're, I don't know, six years old. In the case of Swiss cheese, Propionibacteria gobble up the lactic acid that’s left behind, which creates carbon dioxide. This gas expands parts of the cheese and forms the characteristic bubbles. Lots of microorganisms fart out carbon dioxide. It's one reason beer is carbonated. And sparkling wine. Also, it's why bread dough rises. In the U.S., people often use Swiss cheese as a generic term, but those in Switzerland refer to the dairy item as Emmental. Stop the presses. Also, the French refer to French bread as "bread" (only in French, so it's "le pain"). And Canadians refer to Canadian bacon as "bacon" or "backbacon," and Brits refer to English muffins as, I guess, "muffins." Despite an attempted marketing campaign, though, I'm pretty sure Australians don't call beer "Foster's." While most Swiss cheeses have eyes, some don’t, according to U.S. Dairy. Couldn't be arsed to ask the Swiss what they have to say about it, could you? Anyway, okay, MF is there to explain things to people who aren't as traveled, informed, or obsessed with cheese as I am. And to be fair, I hadn't known the name of the actual bacteria involved, so I learned something, too (though the full binomial of this particular strain, which I had to look up, is apparently Propionibacterium_freudenreichii  ).I've simply spent too much of my adult life, and a good bit of it before then, enjoying the products of this and other microorganisms to agree that it's "gross." Cheese was invented long before we knew about microbes, and the discovery thereof only improved the production of that delicious food. |
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