We’ve al heard the story of the farmer who played his cows classical music claiming it made their milk sweeter and richer. And the lab studies that showed veggies grown in the presence of music grew faster and had higher yields. Now, a Swiss university is insisting that Hip Hop music enhances aging cheese…
Cheez-It embraces bleeding-edge science: Does sound-aged
cheese really make a better cracker? You be the judge…
In a boundary-bashing cross-disciplinary experiment, a Swiss team from Bern University of Applied Sciences tested the ability of sound waves to cure and enhance cheese – arguably the most famous of the country’s food exports.
What they did
Eight full wheels of Emmentaler cheese, all made with milk from the same herd of cows and all processed in the same cheesemaking plant, were exposed to different audio sources in surround sound.
One of the cheeses was played hip hop, another rock, and another classical. Three more were exposed to pure sound waves in the low-, middle- and high-frequency ranges (sine waves). A ‘control’ control cheese was not exposed to any sound. The ‘conditioning lasted 6 and a half months.
At the end of the aging period, identical core samples were taken from al the cheese and served to a panel of flavour judges. The samples were identified only by labels composed of random numbers.
What they found
In the end, the judges came to a concensus that the hip hop-blasted cheese had developed the strongest, fruitiest flavour of the wheels exposed to music. The mid-range pure sound waves produced a cheese with the best flavour and aroma among its group. But the control cheese apparently came out on top of them all for flavour, strength and aroma.
Perhaps most important of all the findings was – the changes apparently caused by music and sound bombardment were only minor: “In general, it can be confirmed that the discernible sensory differences detected during the screening process were minimal. The conclusion that these differences did indeed confirm the hypothesis, namely that they can clearly be traced back to the influence of music, is conceivable, but not compelling.”
So, why is Cheez-It collabing with the Pandora music streaming service to offer a very limited-edition music-aged cracker?
Grasping at straws?
I am not qualified to comment on the legitimacy of Cheez-It’s claim that music makes the cheddar better. But here’s the official line from the product website:
“Cheez-It Aged by Audio is the first snack sonically-aged to hip-hop. In a preliminary study, scientists discovered that aging cheese to hip-hop may affect its flavor. Since we’ll do anything for better tasting cheese, we aged our cheese to hip-hop, too. Our cheese listened to a curated Pandora mixtape nonstop: twenty-four hours a day for six months. Until fully mature. Grab a box now before they’re all gone and enjoy a 90-day free trial of Pandora.”
I guess Cheez-It fans were impressed, though. The initial supply sold out within minutes at a price of $5.99 per 12.4 oz. / 351 g box. Resale bids (by extremist collectors) reached $150. per box on eBay.
But there’s still an outside chance…
A reserve of special boxes will be personally signed by SiriusXM radio host and Cheez-It lover Sway Calloway. You can sign up at the Kellogg’s Family Values Website until the end of the month for a chance to win one.
My take
Me? I’ll continue to enjoy cheese on my cracker (or whatever) rather than in it.
~ Maggie J.