hckrnws

Tom Scott on why Swiss Cheese was losing its holes (spoiler: the process became too sanitised - reintroducing impurities solved the problem).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evV05QeSjAw

> Properly formed eyes are a mark of quality.

Except when I asked someone who makes cheese in Switzerland, they told me almost the opposite (and mostly that they export the junk cheese to the US and keep the good stuff).

As an aside, what are the odds this article was written by AI? It has that feel (minus random bolding and bullet points).

Why on Earth would they intentionally export only their garbage cheese? Then the world will only know them for that.

The holes in modern Emmental cheese are created intentionally. In Switzerland the additive used to create them is forbidden. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmental_cheese#Natural_holes_...

Different countries have different tastes (Coca Cola has a different syrup mixture for each countries for instance). There's a YouTube video from a franco-japanese guy who interview a Japanese cheese maker. He was trained by a Swiss person (but in the US, of all places) and softly complained that Japanese palate favored more bland cheese compared to what he experienced.

So it makes sense for a Swiss cheese maker to export a more marketable cheese, which are generally less strong and younger than the local one. Just like there's an export Guinness or Kilkenny that different from one you'd get in Ireland.

Of note: cheese label are strongly protected in Europe; you cannot legally sell an AOP labelled cheese without adhering to strict guideline about the raw material (including geographic provenance) and processing.

> Why on Earth would they intentionally export only their garbage cheese?

This usually happens when one population is discerning and the other is not.

I don't know what to make of that statement. It is arrogant, at least. Are you trashing just the 340 million people in the US with this comment, or everybody not-Swiss?

It's an observation, not a value judgement. Try finding a fresh loaf of bread in the average American suburb.

American suburbs tend to have excellent bread in middle class neighborhoods or higher. This isn't the 90s.

Honest question.. where? Most bread seems to be high in additives and promoted as a “healthy food”, like additional vitamines etc.

And even when buying natural bread without these added “benefits”, it often has high levels of sodium (up to like 200mg per slice).

Bread is one of the easiest, most plain things to make, yet finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward in the States. But I do really want to know which shops and which brand you get, I’d love to find good bread lol.

Yup, agreed. The first thing my gf complained about when coming to North America for 6 months was the food. And she never stopped complaining.

Then we went to Germany and I finally understood.

Not only can I pop in to the local bakery on the corner (or the next corner, or the next) for the most amazing breads ever, but I could also go to a Rewe or Edeka and get quite good bread that's still head-and-shoulders above anything in America.

My fav right now is a walnut spelt bread roll that I get for 90 cents apiece at Edeka. A bit pricey but it's worth it. Put on some President butter [1] and some cheeses and it's divine!

[1] https://www.president.de/produkte/butter/meersalzbutter-250-...

Yeah, I was like that. It’s been almost 5 years so complaining is to a minimum, I got used to a lot of the food, but bread is one of those “staple foods” to me that still has me complaining every now and then haha

Search Google maps for "bakery" and sort by rating.

It's not hard to find a good bakery in any dense area in the US. I have to imagine people claiming otherwise are indulging in Yankee-bashing, a favorite European pastime.

What one considers a "good bread" or "good bakery" depends on the person. I'm from Switzerland. When I was in the United States (Bay Area, San Francisco), in 2000-2003, I did _not_ find what I consider a "good bread". I did find "bakery".

> When I was in the United States (Bay Area, San Francisco)

The good bread is in the Santa Cruz mountains. In San Francisco, I’ve only had it in wealthy homes where home staff made it fresh that day.

I can walk five minutes to a local grocery store and get fresh bread from their bakery. Immigrant bakeries are also great, I had some buns from a chinese bakery last weekend that were a "if this is what food is supposed to taste like, what have I been eating until now???" moment

Wondering why someone did not solve the problem already? Of all the countries in the world US is brimming with entrepreneurs who want to "solve" a consumer problem, and with modern population I assume there is enough demand on fresh/healthier products - why on earth someone wouldn't try to fix it there?

Solving the problem of european tourists being unable to figure out that they have to walk to the bakery section of the supermarket rather than the shelf-stable bread-like products section if they want something they consider bread does not sound like much of a business opportunity.

You think Europe does not have supermarkets?

>Solving the problem of european tourists being unable to figure out that they have to walk to the bakery section of the supermarket rather than the shelf-stable bread-like products section if they want something they consider bread

Every supermarket I can locally go to has a bread-on- the shelf section, as well as a very fresh bread section. Not to mention 'bread shops' exist.

Don't underestimate the ability of tourists from anywhere to not understand how to look around a shop.

Finding bread in America that isn't over-overloaded with sugar is very difficult.

Quite a few of my family take their own bread to the US. Of late, the problem has been solved as, apart from work, people just aren't travelling there anymore - for non bread-related reasons, of course. For the US fam that now travel back to the eu (an awful lot) more, they go wild for eu bread: it just doesn't taste like cak, /sp - i mean cake.

> why someone did not solve the problem already?

Most Americans are fine eating stale or preserved bread. (Almost all pre-sliced supermarket bread is the latter.) You just don’t have enough people to spread the cost of baking fresh bread throughout the day outside wealthy communities.

That said, a lot of European bread is also trash. There are simply some bread-loving ones where it isn’t. Similarly, there are places in America with great bread (New Orleans, New York and Miami), and places without (Northern California and the Midwest).

> That said, a lot of European bread is also trash.

Yes thank you for pointing this out. I've noticed even the bakeries around me (in Switzerland) aren't that great; for me the best are from the farmers markets and even still you have to be discerning for which are actually good. On the other side I've had some fantastic bread in the US from specialty bakeries.

Next up on Show HN: Uber for baking

https://www.ibfoods.com/locations/

Long island new york, here is a a store chain with out of this world bread.

> Bread is one of the easiest, most plain things to make, yet finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward in the States

Finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward anywhere in EU. It either has sugar or additives or it is cooked at a too low temperature to be useful.

> or it is cooked at a too low temperature to be useful

In what way is that bread "not useful"?

> where?

Wealthy communities. Upper-middle class, maybe.

That, or an immigrant bakery. (Mexican. Korean. Taiwanese. Japanese.)

Most suburbs have very artificial breads. Best bread would be in NY or DC, with a big population of foreigners ready to pay the price for fresh bread.

they said bread, not sugar fluff with a brown outside.

Don't get me wrong, shit's delicious. It's just not what bread should be.

If you can only find wonderbread I am surprised.

Example of great bread: https://www.ibfoods.com/search.php?search_query=Bread

None of the breads listed there I would consider to be of the category "bread" as a German, and what I would be looking for when I wanted one.

Yes, a French baguette-type soft white bread is formally "bread", but it is treated as a different/single category here, as "white bread". With examples of typical bread being, say: https://www.hofpfisterei.de/download/Hofpfisterei-Sortiment-... And I don't think the images really carry across the difference (and variety) in texture and density, to someone who simply never had this kind of "non-soft" bread. You can spread cold butter from the fridge on it without breaking it, maybe that gives away a hint towards the difference. Also note the variety of grain: rye, spelt, wheat, barley, oats, in different compositions and degrees of fineness. And this is just one brand/bakery.

Some more "typical German bread" images. I picked types that maybe convey the difference to "white bread" the best in viewing:

https://5-elemente.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/rheinische...

https://heicks-teutenberg.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Honi...

https://img.chefkoch-cdn.de/rezepte/2468131388854443/bilder/...

It's arrogant, but have you travelled to Europe? Food is generally a lot better than in the US, and I mean this starting from the ingredients themselves, so it might have some snarky truth to it.

Most Americans aren’t exposed to enough quality foods of certain types at a young age to develop the taste for them.

For example, most Americans think Hershey’s is what chocolate is supposed to taste like, because they grew up with it.

Same with the mushy Chorleywood processed bread and most American “cheese”

I think this is certainly the root of the misunderstandings in this (and other) spaces.

At the very-local level of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking US food is terrible compared to European food. The US optimizes for volume and cost, Europe leans more towards quality.

Yes, there's a lot of cheap rubbish food in Europe, but those consuming it know it's cheap rubbish.

By contrast, and to your point, most Americans have never experienced really good food, and so it's harder to grasp that their "regular" quality is so low. We don't miss what we've never had.

My local, nothing special, supermarket stocks over 100 species of cheese. I remember going to the US and being confronted either 3 (American, whatever that is, Swiss and Cheddar. Um, which is unlike any cheddar I've ever had. Frankly the biggest difference seemed to be the color (which is artificial).

Think is, you can't describe sailing to someone who has never seen the ocean.

Increased travel, the growth of "American in Europe" YouTube videos, have slowly started permeating though and quality food is starting to appear here and there. But (naturally) its more expensive, so most Americans will be slow to adapt.

> My local, nothing special, supermarket stocks over 100 species of cheese. I remember going to the US and being confronted either 3 (American, whatever that is, Swiss and Cheddar. Um, which is unlike any cheddar I've ever had. Frankly the biggest difference seemed to be the color (which is artificial).

When was this comparison done?

In the last decade or so American grocery stores have dramatically improved their cheese selections. I don't know if it is 100 different cheeses, but it is pretty darn close. And unusual regional cheeses come in all the time.

I hate Hershey’s with passion.

> It is arrogant, at least. Are you trashing just the 340 million people in the US with this comment, or everybody not-Swiss?

You’re parsing discernment as a value judgement. Don’t do that.

New York City has America’s best bagels. This is because OG bagels are best fresh, and making them fresh multiple times a day takes a lot of work. (They stale super fast because gluten is a bastard. Hence toasting.) To pay for that work at a non-ludicrous cost per bagel, you need lots of reliable demand. That really only happens when you have an ecosystem of people who have been eating bagels all their lives made by folks who have been making them similarly.

You don’t find great bagels outside New York (at an affordable price) because the demand isn’t there. Meanwhile, if you haven’t spent time in New York, you probably don’t know (or care about) the difference. Which means you’re unlikely to give excess patronage to anyone who tries to do it right if they try to do it near you. That doesn’t make anyone outside New York who likes their local bagel wrong; it’s just that economies make it very difficult, and frankly pointless, to replicate the New York bagel elsewhere.

If the people in your town will pay extra only for great cheese and the guys across the pond will pay the same price for mediocre and great cheeses, the deck is stacked. (And to be clear, you can find great Swiss cheeses in America. What you can’t is great Swiss wines.)

I'm not a fan of New York bagels. They're generally too doughy and "white bread" tasting for me. Plenty of places have excellent bagels that are pre-boiled with lye. The lye boiling process is not special. What is unique is the particular taste and texture, and it's just one kind of bagel that you can prefer or not prefer.

Your whole comment below about "discernment" and seeking New York bagels out sounds like a personal preference (bred by familiarity), not actually finding the creme de la creme of bagels.

The same goes for Chicago/New York pizza. It's not special. It's just the pizza you metaphorically grew up with.

> bred by familiarity

Bread by familiarity, surely? Sorry for the awful bun. I mean pun.

> The lye boiling process is not special

It’s one element. The result, however, is highly perishable. You can make it last a full day in the counter, but that fucks with the texture.

> it's just one kind of bagel that you can prefer or not prefer

Sure. Same with various cheeses. Or beef.

Kobe beef is predominantly consumed in Japan. A bit makes it out. But you can generally serve someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time in Japan other wagyu and they’ll be happy. You won’t get away with that with a Kobe aficionado, and there are simply more of those in Japan for self-reïnforcing reasons. (I personally like a range of beef, and while Kobe is great, it’s not something I seek out.)

Almost every city has several bakeries that make lye-boiled bagels and plenty of other things that are baked and stocked daily. Most bakers I know will donate their stock of all breads to a homeless shelter at the end of the day and start fresh on new bread in the morning. You don't need extremely high volume for that.

> that are baked and stocked daily

But not multiple times a day. A New York bagel noticeably stales after a couple hours.

Baguettes are the same, by the way. The little handies? If made plainly, correvtly, they change immeasurably once they cool.

When perishability is measured in tens of minutes’ intervals, your economics require a large city of aficionados. (Not applicable to cheese, obviously.)

Most good bakeries everywhere stock multiple times a day as stock gets low. Even the ones selling American baked goods and things like cupcakes because all of these things have shelf lives of hours. Do you believe that New York is the only place in the US where you can get a baguette or a loaf of French bread? Do you think it's the only place you can get a cake?

Having high foot traffic and understanding supply and demand are not unique to New York. The specific type of bagel is, though, because it's a preference rather than a sign of quality. You have fewer bakeries per square mile outside New York, but you have fewer of everything per square mile outside New York. Many cities around the US are plenty dense to support people who make high-quality baked goods.

> Most good bakeries everywhere stock multiple times a day as stock gets low

The stuff that sells. In most bakeries, that doesn’t cover bagels.

> Do you believe that New York is the only place in the US where you can get a baguette or a loaf of French bread?

Nobody claimed this.

> high foot traffic and understanding supply and demand are not unique to New York

It absolutely is. New York has entire American cities’ worth of people in single city blocks. That drives niche culinary diversity in a way that’s impossible to sustain anywhere else in America.

> Many cities around the US are plenty dense to support people who make high-quality baked goods

Again, never contested. But not as wide a variety. You can’t profitably make every sort of baked good fresh every few hours in a town smaller than a few hundred thousand. You can find that within walking distance for bagels, cubanos, naan and dumplings in a lot of Manhattan.

I'm definitely not on the same wavelength as you this evening.

> New York City has America’s best bagels

That's a big claim.

You say it's because they are best fresh -- are you saying that the rest of the country does not have anybody who makes fresh bagels? That's what I get from your first comment, but then you moved the goalposts a bit by qualifying "at an affordable price." So maybe other cities in the US do have bagels that are just as good as NYC but they are more expensive?

I see there is one final qualification you've made: "the New York bagel." In that case, obviously NYC has the best New York bagel ;).

> are you saying that the rest of the country does not have anybody who makes fresh bagels?

Of the kind that stale in two hours? Yes. It wouldn’t be economical.

> maybe other cities in the US do have bagels that are just as good as NYC but they are more expensive?

Never say never, but I haven’t seen it. I have seen private chefs pull it off. But they basically required a sous chef to deal with the lye and boiling.

> there is one final qualification you've made: "the New York bagel." In that case, obviously NYC has the best New York bagel

Yup :). (I qualified the first reference with OG, btw.)

But I’m going further. You can’t make a New York bagel outside New York without hundreds of customers reliably streaming through the door who will fuck off if you try to take a shortcut.

Other cities have great bagels. (Montrèal.) But they’re not that. That’s what I mean by discernment. Literally, discerning one thing from another. If you’ve eaten New York bagels for a stretch, you can discern them from others. If you like that, you’ll seek it out, rewarding those who do the work and punishing those who dope them with preservatives. That creates symbiosis between the bagel eater and maker.

Same with cheese. Same with barbecue. Or chivitos or chaat or all the other local, perishable yummies that are peculiar in an infuriatingly-tedious way.

A minor correction to your base premise - There is a bagel shop in Newton MA that is open for a few hours in the morning that has bagels just as good as NYC.

People line to before they open and the bagels are quickly sold out in a mad rush.

There is a French bakery close to me in Seattle there makes croissants in the morning and they sell out in less than 2 hours. IMHO they are the best croissants in the city, although we have quite a few good local bakeries.

No? I’d say it’s fair to trash about 300 million of us tbh

The American population as a whole is definitely less discerning when it comes to Swiss cheese than the Swiss

Standards come from a mixture of culture and attention. The reason SF pizza is so much worse than NY pizza is that SF does not have culture of high quality pizza (I say this as an SF native). Conversely we have higher standards for Sourdough. Seoul has higher standards for Kimchi, you get the idea.

Everywhere is like this to some extent - no people can be an expert in all things.

Why does "being less discerning" equals "inferior" in your eyes? People from different cultures like different things and care about different things.

Same reason why it’s hard to buy a decent Swiss wine: the good stuff makes it into bellies before it gets to the border!

so a tourist will go to switzerland love it and hate it once they're home? very good export business

That's how I felt about eggs after visiting Japan. American eggs are bland and tasteless in comparison. Backyard eggs are a general exception to that rule.

because their garbage cheese is still miles better than what other people make, and there's no cheese market large enough and rich enough to pay them what their top cheese is worth, so its worth more just to keep it for themselves

> there's no cheese market large enough and rich enough to pay them what their top cheese is worth

That sounds like the market expressing the collective opinion that their cheese is not miles better than what other people make.

On a related note, the best seems to be considered Emmentaler AOC, and it does not seem especially difficult to purchase outside of Switzerland.

Emmentaler is a fairly common cheese. I would expect the 'best' to be some obscure cheese that neither you nor me have heard of.

I'm quite fond of the Belper Knolle, but even that ain't particularly obscure.

> would expect the 'best' to be some obscure cheese that neither you nor me have heard of

…why? Gruyère and Appenzeller are delicious. They’re also well known. My favorite blue in the world is Point Reyes. Controversial when I’m in France. But not some secret undiscovered jewel.

If obscurity is an important factor, there are going to be as many 'best' cheeses as there are people. For this discussion to make any sense we need something of a consensus opinion, for which Emmentaler gets nominated often enough.

> because their garbage cheese is still miles better than what other people make, [...]

Some other people, maybe. But not all other people.

>that they export the junk cheese to the US and keep the good stuff

people who produce and sell stuff follow profit maximization. Colombia sells its best coffee on the export market because there it will command the highest prices. The people who live in wine growing regions (agricultural) do not have the disposable income to afford expensive wines, so they are shipped to cities. Great croissants are sold locally because they don't last long being shipped. It's not more than profit maximization.

What you are describing holds true only if the buyer values the higher quality, which is true for coffee.

But if you can send the cheap stuff and get the same price why not do that and keep the high quality items for the local market?

Southern Europeans export their tasteless tomatoes to Northern Europe because people there don’t value tasty tomatoes that much. So southern Europeans keep the good vegetables for themselves.

> Southern Europeans export their tasteless tomatoes to Northern Europe because people there don’t value tasty tomatoes that much. So southern Europeans keep the good vegetables for themselves.

It's the other way around. The problem is that mass-market tomato varieties have been selected and bred for a long shelf life - which led to them losing taste because breeders didn't care about taste, only about durability [1]. And the flavors aren't the only thing that went away, the second breeding focus on yield led to tomatoes that don't have as much sugar any more because there's only so much sugar a single plant can make.

So if you want to ship tomatoes to Nothern European countries that actually last a few days of display time on the shelf before going bad, you'll want to breed varieties with less taste. If you were to ship tasty tomatoes, probably half the shipment would go bad before ever reaching the store.

And that's not just valid for tomatoes, it's valid for all sorts of agricultural products - including meat. You're only going to get the truly good stuff if you go local and pay the surcharge for varieties and breeds that are "less efficient" to grow but yield more flavor.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-tomatoes-got-bla...

I don’t think this is true, wherever I’ve traveled the opposite has held - the finest materials are exported which is sad for the locals. Right away Wool stuck out as an example from Peru. I naively thought that going to Peru would guarantee me the finest wool at the best prices. Anyway I’d like to see some data that backs up the claim that junk Swiss cheese is exported to the US market successfully.

I think perhaps what is going on here is that the most commonly exported variety of cheese exported from Switzerland is Emmentaler, which matches the US taste profile (and has holes), but in Switzerland is considered a rather bland variety compared to e.g. Gruyere or Appenzeller. Maybe that got a bit exaggerated and it was labeled as "junk" cheese somewhere along the chain of communication.

If you believe that price equals quality, the fact that Switzerland is an order of magnitude richer than Peru - and considerably richer than the US - might make all the difference.

"Swiss cheese" is not... a "Swiss" cheese. It's just the name of a cheese, but that cheese does not come from Switzerland.

> that cheese does not come from Switzerland

The canton of Bern makes an absolutely excellent Emmantaler. It’s the original Swiss cheese as brought to America by 19th-century Swiss immigrants to Wisconsin.

Emmentaler is a cheese originally from Switzerland, though many other countries now make a cheese that they call like that.

"Swiss cheese" is supposed to be similar to Emmentaler (or inspired from it?). But the fact that Swiss Emmentaler counts as Swiss cheese does not mean that Swiss cheese counts as Emmentaler, or is from Switzerland at all.

I always found Emmentaler bland and boring compared to many others in Switzerland, I wish the immigrants brought something better.

I have heard that Denmark exports their best pigs and leaves the second best for home. Not sure why that should be any truer than what you heard regarding Switzerland and their strategy, but they seem to represent two differing strategies about how to best profit from strong points, it would be nice to figure if either is the dominant one.

Perhaps we can ask Italy what they do with tomatoes and parmigiano.

In two minds as to your sarcasm level. Anyone who has eaten bacon in Denmark or Raclette in Switzerland or a fresh pasta sauce in Italy could testify that the best stays home

I am so confused as to why everyone is talking about Switzerland, the country, acting in unison when it comes to exports. That's not really how it works... Some Swiss companies are more export focused, others are more domestically focused. There's no single central agency that goes around the country and grades cheese manufacturers and creameries and forces some to export, and others to sell to local grocery store chains...

You sure about that? Swiss agriculture is tightly controlled.

> they told me almost the opposite

For Emmantaler? Or cheese in general?

Don’t trust everything people tell you

The term "Swiss cheese" is a constant source of amusement for people from Europe... you know, like, there is only one type of cheese made in Switzerland...

In German, "Swiss cheese" is a term that's well known, and doesn't count that kind of amusement.

For example, you could say that something "looks like swiss cheese" when it has a lot of holes in it, like very old clothing. It's often used slightly ironic, but that's not due to what you state.

In German „Swiss cheese“ simply means „Schweizer Käse“ or „Käse aus der Schweiz“ - but you’ll usually still find the exact type like Emmentaler on the label and packaging. So, as a German, it’s a bit amusing indeed.

No because "Swiss cheese" means "Emmentaler", not "Schweizer Käse". Quote from the article:

> In the U.S., we call it “Swiss” cheese, while in Switzerland, it’s known as Emmental.

Well of course not, but at some point it became an icon. Similar to eating a Danish pastry, like the Danish only made one type of pastry...

Of course cheese with holes in it isn't the only type of cheese they make

I'd rather be known for Swiss cheese than American cheese. At least Swiss is actually cheese and not a cheese product. American cheese is nasty. It baffles me people not only eat it, but also like it

There are largely three types of cheese in the US: Swiss, American and Cheddar. I live near to Cheddar (Somerset, UK) but I'm not going to get too outraged.

All countries, without exception, do something unpleasant to an ingredient or dish that the rest of the world will cry foul over. It is the way of things.

I'm always somewhat amused that British supermarkets seem to have a cheese section and right next to it a Cheddar section. (Ie Cheddars take up as much space as all the other kinds of cheeses combined.)

Are you sure? I live within 1 mile of Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl (OK) and within say five miles of a lot more supermarkets and all the cheeses are mixed up somewhat across the aisles. I will have to stray to Sherborne or Crewkerne for the really exotic mob (Waitrose).

I'm quite partial to Somerset brie and I'm putting my head up over the parapet here 8)

Well, I mostly lived in the UK in the 2010s. Perhaps things have changed in the meantime?

Did you form this picture of US cheese after visiting a hot dog cart?

Few things are more popular among Europeans than making up ignorant nonsense about how dumb and backwards Americans are.

My favorite is that we don't have bakeries or endless varieties of fresh bread.

Americans are richer per capita than Europeans. Particularly when it comes to disposable purchasing power in a foreign country. A lot of European stereotypes about America are filtered through both tourist traps and cost constraints.

(For a similar effect in respect of Europe, see the median Russian tourist summarizing Western Europe.)

Switzerland and Norway usually have a higher per capita gdp than the US. Most Western European countries are not so dramatically behind the US. But on the other hand, European countries have far less income inequality than the US, and less poverty. Then, not everything is about money. Culture matters a lot when it comes to food.

> Switzerland and Norway usually have a higher per capita gdp than the US

And strong currencies. You don’t get this bias in either, generally.

> on the other hand, European countries have far less income inequality than the US, and less poverty

Irrelevant. I’m not saying one is superior to the other. Just that the median European tourist probably isn’t experiencing any American city or town like the median American who lives there.

This is partly due to tourist effects. But it’s also due to cost. After GDP/capita differentials and FX effects, you’re comparing drastically different worlds. (Same for Americans traveling to Europe and, outside a few pricy capitals, generally finding a cheap, luxurious holiday.)

> Switzerland and Norway usually have a higher per capita gdp than the US.

But lower median disposable income. Europe mostly just poor.

hey, you forgot #4 and #5: queso fresco and cotija in the southwest. we also import and make plenty of other good cheeses =)

Processed cheese is ~20% of the US market, and Swiss cheese is less than 3%. Mozzarella by itself is something like 30%.

Not all American cheese is “cheese product”. American cheese is, broadly speaking, “normal” cheese blended with emulsifiers and additives. The deli-style ones have minimal additives and are still legally real cheese.

American cheese is just cheese with an emulsifier, sodium citrate, added that makes it so that it doesn’t break when melted.

At most it adds a slight amount of acidity and makes for a very attractive melting property. There’s not really anything disgusting about it for most people because most people find its melting properties to be a positive.

Hating American cheese is an affect people adopt for the same reason people adopt an affect of hating mayo: certain cultural elements tell them to.

The technical definition of American cheese is that.

In practice, unless you are going to look specifically for it, Kraft, Velveeta et. al. are more than happy to sell you "American cheese product" which does not meet FDA standards for labeling for American cheese, and in practice a lot of people criticizing American cheese are actually criticizing cheese product, which is what is super easy to find both in American supermarkets and abroad.

Europeans also generally take offense at some of the stuff in American supermarkets that has implied labeling like European cheese, like the powdered Kraft Parmesan.

Unless you are buying the absolute cheapest package of cheese slices it will still be real cheese. I'm not even sure if I've ever even seen a Kraft or Valveeta sliced cheese product, only lesser no-name brands. I've been am American all my life and do not buy process cheese product as it does take like plastic, but actual American cheese is delicious on burgers and grilled cheeses and a few other select meals.

What's crazy is Europe allowing 5% non-milk-fat/vegetable fat products to be called "ice cream". Thankfully in America it has to be 10% milkfat at least.

The hero image for Kraft Singles on Wikipedia clearly states “Pasteurized prepared cheese product” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kraft_Singles.jpg

It is a sleight of hand that it says American, but it specifically does not say American cheese as a single phrase.

Wait so when Europeans complain about American cheese, they are talking about Kraft/Velveeta? I always thought of those as their own independent thing, do they not purchase their cheese at the deli? Most foods exported across the Atlantic are not going to be the fresh kind...

It's very easy to make American cheese at home, and it happens to make the very best macaroni and cheese. As you say, mix some other cheese with sodium citrate dissolved in water. Cheddar works great. You'll get a nacho-sauce-like goop that you can pour onto your pasta (cavatappi or fusilli are best). Add in a caramelized onion and you'll never want to eat boxed mac & cheese again.

Yes.

A good way to think about American Cheese is to consider if instead of it being a mass produced, highly available product, it was made by Thomas Keller and served in a dish at The French Laundry. Then we would call it “molecular gastronomy” and it would be a nice littler touch to some dish.

It's like British English, or Chinese cuisine.

As is "American cheese"

Call me naive, but honestly never made the connection between swiss cheese and Switzerland.

I live in the country, and when I went to USA I found it amusing that a sandwich's ingredients include "Swiss". (No mention of "cheese")

It's like saying "cheddar". Cheese is assumed

There could be more to it; some processed cheese products can't legally be named cheese.

Cheddar is a small town and a gorge in Somerset, UK. I live close by.

Switzerland is an entire country with sodding great mountains and lakes, multiple towns, cities and a lot of worryingly loved leather clothing.

How on earth can you reduce a nation that supplies the rather lovely Swiss Guard to the Vatican and rather a lot more (that word is working quite hard at this point and perspiring very heavily) to the entire world to ... cheese.

I suggest you don't apply for any jobs in marketing. Your talents will be wasted, should any be found 8)

So, what's for dinner this Thanksgiving?

The context of the thread is "swiss" on a menu in the US, which makes it obvious that it's cheese, and not a guard at the Vatican, same as cheddar on a sandwich is obviously not referring to an English town. It may shock you to find out that things are named differently in different places. smh

I mean Switzerland in the USA is mostly know for cheese, chocolate, Nazi gold, money laundering, and tax evasion.

> honestly never made the connection between swiss cheese and Switzerland

Swiss cheese usually refers to Emmentaler. It comes from the Emme Valley, in Bern canton. It’s delicious and one of the OG three of Depression-era fondue. (Gruyère and Appenzeller. Vacherin can come too.)

It’s called Swiss cheese because Wisconsin has a sizable 19th century ethnically Swiss diaspora. (Wisconsin also has a diaspora from Parma. It’s suspected the soft cheese they make is closer to what Parmesan was before WWII than Parmigiano Reggiano, though I personally find the latter tastier.)

It usually means Gruyère cheese.

Only in France. For some reason, the names for Gruyère and Emmental got swapped there.

As noted in the article, it is the cheese internationally known as Emmental, not Gruyère. Both Swiss and Gruyere cheese are regulated food names in the US Swiss (Emmentaler is an alternative name in the regs, but is a label of geographic origin in Switzerland) is defined at 21 CFR § 133.195, Gruyere at 21 CFR § 133.149.

Which has no holes. (The cheese known as Gruyère in Switzerland, I mean.)

French-style Gruyère can has holes. (Swiss does not.)

Well - sure. Ever heard the phrase “contrary to popular belief”? :)

But US Gruyere cheese DOES have holes: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B...

We must immediately start constructing all critical safety systems out of Gruyere. If there are no holes, then it's impossible for the holes to line up.

American Swiss cheese developed from Emmental cheese.

It is odd, but people often confuse Emmenthaler and Gruyere.

Even in Italian (just across the border!) it was not uncommon to hear expressions like "full of holes like groviera", and it seems in French it's the same based on the existence of this Wikipedia page https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxe_du_fromage_%C3%A0_tro...

Language is just strange.

They also have their own “Gruyère” - different from the Swiss one and with holes - in France:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruy%C3%A8re_fran%C3%A7ais

They also have a cheese similar to the Gruyère from Switzerland, but with a different name (the Gruyère part dropped from the name over time):

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comt%C3%A9_(fromage)

I'm French and it apparently took more than four decades for me to TIL that we have our own Gruyère.

I always assumed we were just calling Emmental the wrong thing. Then again most of what we call Gruyère is a somewhat industrialized store-bought thing that arguably tastes like neither Emmental not Gruyère (but at least it has holes, I guess). And to boot, I'm pretty sure we call "Gruyère" some of the products that are labeled as Emmental anyway.

In retrospect, it makes sense we'd have our "own" given how finicky we are with names (of things we produce).

Edit: turns out we've also bastardized Emmental anyway.

As a Swiss, confusing Emmenthaler and Gruyere is wild - they're soooo different in just about any property except both being called cheese. And I personally believe Emmenthaler to be the worst cheese produced in Switzerland. The only thing it has going for it are the iconic holes. Gruyere on the other hand is up there with the best of Swiss cheeses.

I kinda love that someone who wrote that article was like "this needs a table for clarity!"

I believe one of the first publications explaining the phenomenon dates back to 2015. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095869461... It details the formation of the holes, their size, etc. I remember sending it at the time as a contribution here, thinking the topic was worth interest. Unfortunately, it fell through the cracks. I had also submitted it for approval to the Ig Nobel committee (it diverges somewhat, strictly speaking, from the philosophy of the prize). I received a reply saying it would be reviewed.

I love that the first sentence of the article has the simple answer, and as you read more, you get more detail. The opposite of the "click bait" trend.

TIL "Swiss cheese" is apparently a specific brand of cheese in the US and not just cheese from Switzerland.

> "Swiss cheese" is apparently a specific brand of cheese in the US

Type. And there are lots of non-Swiss Emmantaler producers.

But ... why only a few big holes? Sometimes "fresh cheese" develop a lot of small holes (and a strong flavor), but no big holes. Why big holes?

Many small holes collapsing into a few large ones, perhaps? You can sometimes see where two holes merged.

That's a good idea, but if the holes collapse I expect more variation in size. My guess is that the CO2 diffuses until it finds a nearby hole.

Did someone put a whole cheese in MNR to track the holes? (I guess an ultrasound image device is cheaper. Is it possible to use a CT adding contrast to the cheese?)

Havarti has a lot of small holes, but its a different kind of cheese

Baby Swiss and Lacey Swiss are small hole varieties.

I don't believe Baby Swiss is actually a variety of Swiss (Emmental) cheese, rather than a completely different cheese. IIRC Baby Swiss was invented in America and uses a different process.

I am not familiar with Lacey Swiss so no opinion on that one.

We add holes for USA only, because 39% of taxes on our exportations.

Because the damn swiss folks really want to sell more cheese, without actually producing more cheese!

So the proper way is to cut half the cheese out, say that holes are NECESSARY and IMPORTANT - and then sell twice as much as before. They are a genius people.

Isn't cheese usually sold by weight? So your theory, erm, has holes in it.

Fun fact - in Switzerland the holes are not permitted. Bonus fact - Switzerland imports more cheese than it exports.

Fun fact, but also fake news. Emmethaler cheese has holes even in Switzerland. It's the only part of that cheese that tastes any good, so why remove them?

And how would they know if my cheese has holes, given that there is a non-zero probability that a random cut over a piece of cheese goes through no holes at all? They would have to make so many cuts that the cheese becomes grated. And grated cheese most definitely doesn't have holes!

They know the density of holeless cheese, and can compare to the sample. If it's underweight it probably has holes?

This is bullshit, Emmentaler has holes here as well.

Source: am Swiss, live in Emmental

> in Switzerland the holes are not permitted

For Emmentaler?

Like a White Castle burger!

For those who are interested, Taste Atlas has a very huge list of cheese.

https://www.tasteatlas.com/cheese

Having experienced several of the cuisines rated by Taste Atlas, I would not trust a comma out of their reviews :P

From the linked page:

> With your agreement, we and our 937 partners ...

937? That is insane. That is basically spyware.

As a kid, I was told it was due to rats and other critters getting into the cheese.

I’d then proceed to wonder why no adults thought to throw it out, much less eat the stuff.

> In the U.S., we call it “Swiss” cheese, while in Switzerland, it’s known as Emmental.

What? I struggle to see how this sentence makes any sense. The two products can both have holes, I guess? But grocery store Swiss cheese in the US is a waxy bland cheese product with a slight tang, whereas Emmentaler is complex, funky and quite assertive by comparison. I doubt the fans of either product love the other.

Like "parmesan" the cheap versions you find easily has no relationship with the actual thing, even if decades ago maybe the actual thing was initially imported with no local alternative.

Swiss like French have hundreds of different cheeses, so calling a specific cheese a Swiss cheese is like telling "Why does American car is powered by an electrical motor?", talking about a specific Tesla car while you have hundreds of other cars manufactured in the US.

It's because of bacterial farts.

Swiss cheese have holes so the swiss dwarfs can hide in them.

So in Switzerland, Swiss cheese dwarfs Swiss dwarfs in size.

It does not. Swiss cheese does not have holes.

boom baby

Swiss army dual uses cheese as target practice?

Another fact about Emmentaler cheese is that it has a relative low salt content compared to other cheeses.

Yes, it's one of the better cheeses if you're on a sodium-reduced diet. Fresh Mozzarella is another good one.

It's a fairly safe bet that the harder the cheese, the higher the sodium content.

Why does bread have holes?

Actually, it's the holes that have bread (around them).

Lateral thinking.

I believe bread has been holey ever since the Last Supper.

And unfortunately for one guy the grail was holy, not holey.