Emmental

The Emmental is a valley and a farming region east of Bern. Large cow's-milk wheels were made there to use abundant milk and to keep it. The eyes, which look like a special effect, are a result of the cultures and the warm stage of aging. They became the picture of Swiss cheese for people who never saw the valley.

The style was too successful to stay at home. France makes a great quantity of a related Emmental, much of it a factory cheese, and other countries make holey cheeses under the words Swiss or Emmental. The Swiss AOP is the cheese of the defined Swiss zone. A block labeled Swiss cheese in an American shop is usually a domestic cheese in this image. This catalog points the alias Swiss cheese at this page because that is the style the alias means, and the article is here to keep the copy and the original apart.

Cow's milk is set, the curd is cooked and pressed into very large wheels, and the cheeses are salted and aged. During ripening, propionic bacteria produce carbon dioxide. The gas collects in round eyes and the same fermentation produces the sweet, nutty aroma. A wheel with many even eyes is behaving as intended. A wheel with almost no eyes may still be cheese, but it has not done the Emmental thing.

Swiss wheels from the protected make are not the same object as a square block of foreign Swiss cheese, even when both have holes. Milk, culture, size, and age differ. French Emmental is a major cheese in its own right and a different industry. When you buy a wedge, the country and the protection tell you which member of the family you have. The holes alone do not.

Emmental tastes sweet, mild, and nutty, with a smooth paste and a smell that is clean and slightly fruity or buttery. It is less savory than Gruyère, and less sharp than any cheddar. The eyes taste like the paste around them. They are not pockets of a different flavor.

Bitterness, a rancid smell, or a sticky wet face on the cut surface is a fault. A very mild block can be boring without being spoiled. That boredom is common in cheeses made to be inoffensive. The Swiss wheel, properly aged, has more of the sweet nut flavor and a firmer texture. Taste a piece plain. If you taste only salt, the cheese is a copy aimed at a sandwich.

Melt it in fondue alongside Gruyère, which supplies the savor while Emmental supplies sweetness and melt. Slice it for a sandwich when you want a mild cheese with a little more aroma than young Gouda. Use it in a baked dish when the other flavors are strong enough to lead. It stretches and softens well.

Do not expect it to season a pasta the way Parmesan does. It will melt into softness and taste mild. Do not use a harshly salty domestic Swiss as the only cheese in a fondue that people are supposed to notice. Maasdam is the Dutch substitute when you want a similar sweet hole on a shorter aging. Gruyère is the substitute when the holes were never the point and the savor was.

The protected cheese is Swiss, from the Emmental and its defined zone. The style is eaten across Europe and the Americas, often without the Swiss wheel. In the United States, Swiss cheese means the sandwich slice and the deli slice as much as it means an import. In France, Emmental is an ordinary grocery cheese made at a large scale.

All of those uses are real, and they should be named honestly. A ham sandwich does not require a wheel from Bern. A Swiss fondue is better if at least part of the cheese is the real savory partner, Gruyère, and a true Emmental. When a label says Emmentaler and shows the Swiss protection, you have this cheese. When it says Swiss, you have the family.