Credit: Bern University of the Arts HKB
A team of researchers from Switzerland’s Bern University of Arts have discovered that sound affects the development of cheese and hip-hop makes things cheesiest. For six months, the team exposed nine 22-pound wheels of Emmental cheese to an endless, 24-hour loop of music using a mini-transducer, which directed the sound waves directly into the cheese wheels.
The “classical” cheese mellowed to the sounds of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The “rock” cheese listened to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” An ambient cheese listened to Yello’s “Monolith,” the hip-hop cheese was exposed to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Jazz (We’ve Got)” and the techno fromage raved to Vril’s “UV.” A control cheese aged in silence, while three other wheels were exposed to simple high, medium and low frequency tones.
According to a press release, the cheese was then examined by food technologists from the ZHAW Food Perception Research Group, which concluded that the cheese exposed to music had a milder flavor compared to the non-musical cheese. They also found that the hip-hop cheese had a stronger aroma and stronger flavor than other samples.