On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen ( PDFDrive ) 135

To avoid this, watch the dish carefully and remove it as soon as the cheese melts.. On the other hand, browned, crisp cheese is quite delicious: the religieuse at the bottom of the fondu

Toppings, Gratins When a thin layer of

cheese is heated in the oven or under a broiler

— on a gratin, a pizza, or bruschetta — the intense heat can quickly dehydrate the casein fabric, toughen it, and cause its fat to separate

To avoid this, watch the dish carefully and remove it as soon as the cheese melts On the other hand, browned, crisp cheese is quite

delicious: the religieuse at the bottom of the

fondue pot crowns the meal If you want a cheese topping to brown, then pick a robust cheese that resists fat loss and stringiness The grating cheeses are especially versatile; Parmesan can be formed into a thin disk and melted and lightly browned in a frying pan or the oven, then molded into cups or other shapes

Process and Low-Fat Cheeses

Process cheese is an industrial version of

cheese that makes use of surplus, scrap, and

resolidified, long-keeping fondue made from trimmings of genuine cheeses that were

unsaleable due to partial defects or damage The first industrial attempts to melt together a blend of shredded cheeses were made at the end of the 19th century The key insight — the necessity of “melting salts” analogous to the tartaric acid and citric acid in a fondue’s wine

or lemon juice — came in Switzerland in

1912 Five years later, the American company Kraft patented a combination of citric acid and phosphates, and a decade after that it

brought out the popular cheddar look-alike Velveeta

Today, manufacturers use a mixture of

sodium citrate, sodium phosphates, and

sodium polyphosphates, and a blend of new, partly ripened, and fully ripened cheeses The polyphosphates (negatively charged chains of phosphorus and oxygen atoms that attract a cloud of water molecules) not only remove