by Legend has it that the world has the French Revolution to thank Camembert. The cheese with hints of caramelized butter and bronze mushrooms dates back to 1791, when a fugitive priest is said to have shared the recipe with a Camembert farm woman who welcomed him into her home.
The cheese has been a staple in France and abroad ever since. When McDonald’s – to the dismay of some French customers – introduced a burger with slices of Camembert, it also inspired artist Salvador Dalí’s famous gooey bells.
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But in recent weeks Camembert and its tastier tasting cousin, brie cheese, have been the subject of headlines and posts on social media declaring that the beloved youngster is headed for the grave.
The warnings followed a study by France’s National Center for Scientific Research which said the cheeses are “on the brink of extinction” – a death sentence driven by what scientists said was a fungal crisis.
Does this mean charcuterie boards are doomed with delightful sans stinky cheese in the future? This is what scientists told the Washington Post.
What does a model have to do with my meaning?
Not to be gross, but that tasty snack that complements your favorite glass of wine is a dynamic ecosystem.
Cheese has “a whole community of molds, yeasts as well as bacteria,” said Benjamin Wolfe, an associate professor at Tufts University’s biology department. “They’re all hanging out, growing and working together to decompose the cheese.”
All cheese starts the same way: as milk left to curdle. Microbes come to play in the aging process, or the stage that gives cheeses like Camembert their signature funk.
“Those molds are basically doing what we call ‘delicious rot,'” Wolfe said. Like a fungus that breaks down a log or those pesky blue splotches spreading through a stale piece of bread, cheese molds break down the milk. “And as they do that, they’re releasing all kinds of delicious things that people love in Camembert: that kind of sulfur funk that I like to call ‘sweet buttery flatulence,'” he added.
Both Camembert and brie are now made with the same type of mold: Penicillium camemberti, which gives the cheeses their fluffy white coverings and the beloved aromas of dirty socks.
And that, said the French scientists, their concerns could come from it.
What is the problem with Penicillium camemberti?
Until recently, Camembert and brie came covered in blue, orange and green colors – a product of the different types of molds used to make cheeses, said Jeanne Ropars, an evolutionary biologist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research and Université Paris- Saclay.
Eventually, cheese makers identified a particular strain of mold that not only grew quickly, but also gave cheese an attractive white covering. By the 1950s, the combination of industrialization and demand for uniform cheese turned Penicillium camemberti into the gold standard. It is the only strain now used in the production of brie and Camembert.
Over time, that could become a problem, Ropars said.
Penicillium camemberti cannot reproduce on its own, so it must be cloned over and over again – meaning that each cheese is made with a genetically identical strain. That lack of genetic diversity makes it vulnerable to pathogens or other environmental changes, Ropars said.
With each mold a cookie-cutter version of the other, one nasty disease could wipe out a Penicillium camemberti population, Ropars said. Other foods – such as bananas – have the same issue.
Could Brie and Camembert become obsolete?
The short answer: no time soon, so cheese lovers can breathe a sigh of relief.
However, Ropars warns, Penicillium camemberti “can’t survive if we keep going down this path.” She and the other French scientists behind the study are trying to help prevent similar “errors” in future food production.
Despite the lack of variety in the model, Wolfe remains optimistic that industry innovation will save the cheeses.
“There are already great people out there working on new ways to innovate and make these models new things,” he said.
What should a cheese fan do?
Ropars and her team recommend getting comfortable with more diverse, funkier-looking and tasting cheeses—namely, Camembert and brie made with other mold varieties.
Customers experience an albino version of a mold that covers some of their favorite cheeses, making them white. But Ropars said it may be time to embrace Camembert or brie that comes in shades of blue, green or orange.
That approach, however, comes with its own set of challenges, Wolfe warned. Changing models can be unpredictable and not at all tasty.
“You don’t want your cheese to taste like a moldy basement,” he said.
He and his team are already experimenting with ways to quickly domesticate some strains of wild model. The goal is to mask the undesirable traits or potential toxins without genetically modifying the fungus.
And, he said, producers are coming up with different types of cheeses.
For now, Wolfe said, there are too many global crises to worry about — and panic over cheese isn’t one of them. But, if he’s honest, a world where cheese is the biggest problem would be “fantastic,” he said.
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