I am not familiar with Lacey Swiss so no opinion on that one.
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?)
It's a fairly safe bet that the harder the cheese, the higher the sodium content.
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.
For Emmentaler?
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).
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_...
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.
I'm quite fond of the Belper Knolle, but even that ain't particularly obscure.
…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.
Some other people, maybe. But not all other people.
This usually happens when one population is discerning and the other is not.
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.)
> 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 ;).
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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.
Wealthy communities. Upper-middle class, maybe.
That, or an immigrant bakery. (Mexican. Korean. Taiwanese. Japanese.)
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.
Long island new york, here is a a store chain with out of this world bread.
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-...
Don't get me wrong, shit's delicious. It's just not what bread should be.
Example of great bread: https://www.ibfoods.com/search.php?search_query=Bread
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”
Perhaps we can ask Italy what they do with tomatoes and parmigiano.
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.
For Emmantaler? Or cheese in general?
I’d then proceed to wonder why no adults thought to throw it out, much less eat the stuff.
Type. And there are lots of non-Swiss Emmantaler producers.
kleiba•7h ago
loloquwowndueo•6h ago
kgwgk•6h ago
loloquwowndueo•6h ago
kgwgk•6h ago
bigiain•5h ago
JumpCrisscross•2h ago
ofalkaed•6h ago
riffraff•6h ago
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.
kgwgk•6h ago
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)
dragonwriter•6h ago
athenot•5h ago
jahbrewski•6h ago
netsharc•6h ago
sojournerc•6h ago
shrx•5h ago
gerdesj•4h ago
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)
netsharc•1h ago
sojournerc•1h ago
JumpCrisscross•3h ago
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.)
criemen•6h ago
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.
ckdot•1h ago
NoPicklez•5h ago
Of course cheese with holes in it isn't the only type of cheese they make
dylan604•5h ago
gerdesj•4h ago
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.
maxerickson•3h ago
selectodude•3h ago
tomnipotent•3h ago
JumpCrisscross•3h ago
(For a similar effect in respect of Europe, see the median Russian tourist summarizing Western Europe.)
tomnipotent•3h ago
electroglyph•3h ago
eru•3h ago
gerdesj•2h ago
I'm quite partial to Somerset brie and I'm putting my head up over the parapet here 8)
eru•2h ago
creddit•3h ago
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.
bobthepanda•2h ago
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.
pests•14m ago
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.
sowbug•1h ago
542458•3h ago
eru•3h ago
paradox460•2h ago