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The End to a French Cheese Tradition?

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:06PM   
from the what's-that-smell? dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

After years of lobbying, industrial producers are now allowed to make camembert with pasteurised milk. As a result, one of France's beloved cheeses may be disappearing – for good.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180618-the-end-to-a-french-cheese-tradition

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Original Submission

• Re:Pasteurised makes a huge difference. Re:Pasteurised makes a huge difference. (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:23PM (2 children)

  by Arik (4543) on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:23PM (#698953) Journal

  "Those who claim that they taste a significant difference often are buying their unpasteurized milk from a farm that uses better cows (often different breeds) and/or are buying unhomogenized milk too, which has a different impact and different flavor profile depending on whether you get a glass with some cream or not."
  
  I've never seen milk that was unpasteurized but homogenized, though I suppose it's possible to do. Raw milk means neither has been done. And yes, obviously you want to get that from a smaller farm that has good quality control, you're not going to mix the milk of 1000 cows and then sell it raw, that would be nuts.
  
  Anytime you mix milk you increase risk of disease significantly, unless you pasteurize. So you can see how if you want the bulk econo-milk you're not going to get raw.
  
  But in a very real sense, you don't get milk either. It just doesn't taste anything like real milk. Is it less nutritious? That I do not claim to know. But it certainly doesn't taste like milk.
  
  I don't crave a real high fat milk so I just skim the cream off and use it for treats. If you do want a higher fat milk, though, you can stir it up, poor mans homogenization on the spot.
  
  

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• Re:Pasteurised makes a huge difference. Re:Pasteurised makes a huge difference. (Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 26 2018, @09:06PM (1 child)

  by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday June 26 2018, @09:06PM (#698968) Journal

  And yes, obviously you want to get that from a smaller farm that has good quality control

  It's very difficult to do "quality control" that will catch all bad raw milk, even on smaller farms. There have been a number of outbreaks tracked by the CDC from small farms with reasonable hygiene and quality control.

  But in a very real sense, you don't get milk either. It just doesn't taste anything like real milk.

  Well, YMMV.

  I don't claim to be a raw milk afficionado, but I've had it from at least a half-dozen different farms in my lifetime. (I grew up in an area that had a number of dairy farms and helped milk cows on one of them myself periodically when I was a kid.) Some raw milk I've had has been great -- very sweet and rich and amazing, though from a different cow breed -- while some was mediocre, some relatively flavorless and inferior to average pasteurized milk I've had (this was milk I milked out of a cow myself), and some had strong flavors (like very "grassy") that were not a net-positive.

  I'd attribute a lot of the differences in flavor profile to the individual farms (e.g., cow diet and living conditions) and types of cows, as well as seasonal variation, but overall I really don't think it tastes a lot different from normal low-temp pasteurized milk (1% or skim, since as you point out, it's not generally homogenized). I've had various profiles of pasteurized milk too -- some much better than others. Certainly I'd say my raw milk experiences have had more varied tastes overall.

  I tried looking around the internet for double-blind taste tests with raw milk, but couldn't really find any (except for a New Yorker article from a few years back where pasteurized homogenized was judged superior, but I don't know what the conditions of that were and it sounds like they only compared two milks -- one of which was homogenized and the other not). I suspect if the raw milk advocates actually had data supporting their "better taste" assertions in blind testing, they'd be trumpeting it from the hilltops....

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  • Re:Pasteurised makes a huge difference. (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:24PM

    by Arik (4543) on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:24PM (#698991) Journal

    I see little to disagree with. The natural product varies greatly by from cow and cow, and by diet, and so forth. I wouldn't claim ALL raw milk is good. I grew up on a farm, but not a dairy farm, we just kept a couple of good milkers, Guernsey's btw, not Holsteins. I've seen a few dairy farms though, generally not impressed. I suspect most of the milk they produce really does need to be pasteurized, and should be. But when you have really good raw milk - then it's a shame to cook all the flavor out of it, IMOP.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?

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