Legend has it that the world owes something to Camembert, the French Revolution. The cheese, with traces of caramelized butter and earthy mushrooms, dates back to 1791, when an escaped priest is said to have shared the recipe with a Camembert farmer woman who welcomed him into her home.
Cheese has since become a staple in France and abroad. McDonald’s – to the dismay of some French customers – once introduced a burger studded with slices of Camembert, which also inspired artist Salvador Dalí’s famous tacky clocks.
Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for The Washington Post’s most important and interesting stories.
But Camembert and its bland cousin, brie cheese, have been the subject of headlines and social media posts in recent weeks declaring that the beloved fromage is heading for the grave.
The warnings follow a study by the French National Center for Scientific Research that said the cheeses were “on the brink of extinction”; This was a death sentence due to what scientists say was a fungal crisis.
Does this mean deli counters are doomed to a future without deliciously scented cheeses? Here’s what scientists told the Washington Post.
What does mold have to do with my brie?
I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but that delicious snack that complements your favorite glass of wine is actually a dynamic ecosystem.
Cheese contains “a community of molds, yeasts and bacteria, as well as bacteria,” said Benjamin Wolfe, an associate professor in the biology department at Tufts University. “They all hang out together, grow, and work together to separate the cheese.”
All cheeses start the same way: like milk left to curdle. Microbes come into play during the aging process, or the stage that gives cheeses like Camembert their distinctive funk.
“These molds actually do what we call ‘delicious rot,'” Wolfe said. Like a fungus splitting a log or those pesky blue stains spreading inside a stale piece of bread, molds in cheese break down milk. “And in doing so, they introduce all kinds of delicious things that people love about Camembert: the kind of sulphurous funk I call ‘sweet buttery fizz,’” he added.
Camembert and brie are now made with the same type of mold: Penicillium camemberti, which gives the cheeses their fluffy white coating and the beloved aroma of dirty socks.
And French scientists said this could lead to their death.
What is the problem with Penicillium camemberti?
Until recently, Camembert and brie were covered in shades of blue, orange and green, said evolutionary biologist Jeanne Ropars of the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Paris. This was a product of the different types of mold used to make cheese. Saclay.
Eventually, cheesemakers identified a specific type of mold that not only grew quickly but also gave cheese an attractive white coating. By the 1950s, a combination of industrialization and demand for uniform-looking cheese made Penicillium camemberti the gold standard. It is now the only species used in the production of brie and Camembert.
Over time, this could become problematic, Ropars said.
Penicillium camemberti cannot reproduce on its own, so it must be cloned repeatedly; This means that every cheese is made with the same genetically identical species. The lack of genetic diversity makes it vulnerable to pathogens or other environmental changes, Ropars said.
Because each mold is a common version of each other, a bad disease could wipe out the population of Penicillium camemberti, Ropars said. This is the same problem faced by other foods such as bananas.
Could Brie and Camembert become extinct?
Short answer: not anytime soon, so cheese lovers can breathe a sigh of relief.
Still, Ropars warns that Penicillium camemberti “will not survive if we continue down this path.” He and the other French scientists behind the study want to help prevent similar “mistakes” in future food production.
Despite the lack of diversity in molds, Wolfe remains optimistic that industry innovations will save the cheeses.
“There are some really great people already working on new ways to innovate and enable those patterns to do new things,” he said.
What should cheese lovers do?
Ropars and his team recommend getting used to more diverse, funkier-looking and tastier cheeses, namely Camembert and brie made with other types of molds.
Customers are accustomed to the albino version of the mold that covers some of their favorite cheeses, turning them white. But Ropars said it might be time to embrace Camembert or brie, which come in shades of blue, green or orange.
But Wolfe cautioned that this approach comes with its own challenges. Changing patterns can be unpredictable and not at all appetizing.
“You don’t want your cheese to taste like a moldy basement,” he said.
He and his team are currently testing ways to rapidly domesticate some wild mold species. The goal is to shade out undesirable traits or potential toxins without genetically altering the fungus.
He added that manufacturers produce different types of cheese.
Wolfe said there are plenty of world crises to worry about for now, and the cheese panic isn’t one of them. But honestly, a world where cheese was the biggest problem “would be great,” he said.
Related Content
The true, dramatic story of Robert Downey Jr.’s ‘Oppenheimer’ villain
The mission of this agency is to keep artificial intelligence safe. Their offices are collapsing.
US sends weapons to Israel despite growing alarm over the course of war