Buying, Keeping & Eating It

Every other wing is about how a cheese gets made. This one starts the moment it is finished — at the counter, in the fridge, on the board and in the pan. The recurring theme is that most of the confident advice here is either a marketing claim wearing a number it has not earned, or a real rule applied far more widely than it holds.

Buying Cheese

Buying Cheese Every label tells you how old the cheese is and none tells you how long ago it was cut — which, after the wheel is opened, is the clock that governs everything. Plus why the white stuff is usually not mould, and why age is the thing least worth paying for. Explore →

Storing & Cutting

Storing & Cutting The USDA’s one-inch mould rule, and the row underneath it that almost everybody misses: shredded, sliced and crumbled cheese of all types is a discard, because the blade that cut it touched every piece. Plus why cheese paper works and why its statistics do not. Explore →

The Board

The Board The largest single improvement is free and nearly everybody skips it — and the food-safety limit nobody attaches to it. Also the board only a person with a cave can build: one cheese at three ages. Explore →

Pairing

Pairing The study everyone half-quotes found white wine beat the reds — and in the same paragraph said a rule of thumb is the wrong shape of answer. The transferable part is the mechanism: a pairing works when the cheese shortens how long astringency stays dominant. Explore →

Cooking with Cheese

Cooking with Cheese Three ways to stop a sauce breaking, and only one addresses the cause. Why the oldest cheese in the fridge makes the worst sauce, and what the 2016 "wood pulp in your Parmesan" story was actually about. Explore →

Fondue, Raclette & Queso

Fondue, Raclette & Queso Three cultures, one emulsion problem, three answers — acid, emulsifying salts, and refusing to make a sauce at all. Fondue became a national dish because a cheese cartel decided it should, and a Ro-Tel queso turns out to be a citrate cheese sauce that got there first. Explore →

Macaroni & Cheese

Macaroni & Cheese A dozen recipes in this collection that do not agree with each other — roux, egg custard, evaporated milk, and one wartime version with no sauce at all. Jefferson did not invent it; the man who cooked it has a name. And Jeff’s own is still an open experiment. Explore →

Rinds & Leftovers

Rinds & Leftovers If it grew there, eat it; if somebody put it on, don’t. Why "the rind is where the flavour is" is only half right, what a Parmesan rind is really doing in a stock pot, and the French answer to the end of a cheeseboard. Explore →