Cheese connoisseurs are no doubt familiar with a particular kind of semi-hard Swiss cheese called "Tête de Moine." Rather than spreading or slicing the cheese, Tête de Moine is usually served by scraping the top of the cheese wheel in a circular motion using a specialized tool called a Girolle. This produces elegant thin shavings known as rosettes, since they resemble a frilly flower.
The method is both aesthetically pleasing and serves to enhance the aromas and mouth feel of the cheese, according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters (PRL). This group of physicists based in Paris noted a marked similarity between the frilly edges of those cheese flowers and certain leaves, fungi, corals, and even torn plastic sheets—all formed by different mechanisms. So naturally the physicists decided to conduct their own research to determine the underlying mechanism(s) for the delicate frills of Tête de Moine shavings.
Tête de Moine translates as "monk's head," and the name dates back to the 1790s, although the actual cheese originates back to a 12th-century Bellelay monastery in Switzerland. It's made from raw unpasteurized cow's milk and is matured for a minimum of 75 days on spruce boards and boasts a firm reddish-brown crust. The Girolle (named after the French word for chanterelles, which have a similar rosette shape) is a more recent innovation, invented in 1982 specifically for Tête de Moine by a man named Nicolas Crevoisier. It's just a round wooden plate with a pin stuck vertically in the middle—the better to skewer one's cheese wheel—and a crank handle to control the slicing blade.
Fonte: Ars Technica - Leia mais