Last September 2018, Swiss cheesemaker Beat Wampfler, together with a team of researchers from the Bern University of Arts placed nine 22-pound wheels of Emmental cheese in individual wooden crates in Wampfler’s cheese cellar. For the next six months, each cheese was exposed to an endless, 24-hour loop of one song. There is classical – Mozart’s The Magic Flute, rock – Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, ambient – Yello’s Monolithi, hip-hop – A Tribe Called Quest’s Jazz (We’ve Got), and techno fromage – Vril’s UV. This was to test the effect of sound waves in the aging process of cheeses.
The cheeses were evaluated by Food Technologists from the ZHAW Food Perception Research Group. They concluded that the cheese exposed to hip-hop had a strongest aroma and flavor.
“The bacteria did a good job,” Wampfler tells SwissInfo. The experts said A Tribe Called Quest’s cheese was “remarkably fruity, both in smell and taste, and significantly different from the other samples.”
Are the differences all in the taster’s heads? The fromage will now go through a biomedical survey to find out the structural differences of the cheeses.
Image Credit: The Conversation