I buy inexpensive hard cheese from different manufacturers. Recently I began to notice that most types of such cheese have honey notes.
It seemed to me that the cheese contained honey, but this was not written on the label.
Is there something wrong with my taste or is this evidence of a violation of cheese making technology?
Why would inexpensive cheese manufacturers secretly add expensive ingredients like honey?
Because the bees would never see it coming!
They’d bee taken by surpise
Oof, that one stings.
Perhaps this aftertaste is caused by some unnatural ingredients in the composition. Nowadays, milk fat substitutes, calcium chloride and many other bad things are added to inexpensive cheeses.
It would be interesting to listen to the opinion of a technologist who produces similar products.
unnatural
milk fat substitutes, calcium chloride and many other bad thingsJust because this comment can be easily misinterpreted:
- Milk fat substitutes are just plant oils.
- Calcium chloride is what they inject into you if you have a severe calcium deficiency. It’s just calcium salt. Your regular table salt is Sodium chloride. Nigari is magnesium chloride used to make tofu. All three are salts that can be extracted from normal seawater.
Both plant fats and CaCl2 are natural, neither of them are “bad” (when, like everything, they’re consumed in sensible amounts) and they should not be lumped in with “other bad things”, even if you don’t like those ingredients in your cheese.
Maybe they add cheap honey?
Cheap honey is cheap because it’s been adulterated with cheap non-honey syrup
Is what the article I just posted says. Good summary.
My point is that manufacturers can throw all sorts of cheap stuff in that tastes like other stuff.
Maybe all this time your honey actually tasted like inexpensive cheese and you have just picked up on it?
Possibly the starter lactic acid bacterial culture, lactobacillus helveticus. It’s known for giving cheeses a slight sweetness. Honey has a bunch of different acids in it, composition differs by source, but there’s a good chance that’s what the flavor similarity you’re noticing is.
It could be perfectly benign, you just pick up on new flavor notes after eating the same thing for a while. Your first chili is not going to be too fruity, because it’s busy tasting like burning. Your first cup of coffee might not be very pleasant because coffee-naive people typically only taste the bitter at first. Maybe some flavor compound in the cheese is also in honey. It’s unlikely anyone should add honey, and then it’d be on the label.
On the other hand, it’s very common for infections (COVID, especially) to mess up your sense of taste and smell. It could make almost anything smell like almost anything.
One thing to try if it’s obviously not an infection is “just buy better cheese” and see if there are still unexpected flavors.
Also, what kind?
Of course, there are varieties of cheese that do not cause any complaints. They’re just more expensive.
Thanks for the detailed comment!
Please edit your post to make it a question. It’s in the community rules
Stop buying cheap cheese.
I would be happy to buy only high-quality, expensive products)
