Cheese Aged to Hip-Hop Tastes Better

People have been extolling the virtues of playing music to proto-babies and plants for ages. Typically, wombs and planters are soundtracked by the softer sounds of classical music. Researchers in Switzerland found that cheese likes a little music as well. And, true to form, cheese keeps it funky.

Swiss researchers found that cheese that was exposed to hip-hop had the strongest flavor and aroma. They played a variety of music to different wheels of cheese as they aged ranging from A Tribe Called Quest‘s “We Got It From Here,” Led Zeppelin‘s “Stairway to Heaven” and Mozart’s “Magic Flute.”  

“The hip hop sample topped the list of all cheese exposed to music in terms of fruitiness…(it) was the strongest of these in terms of smell and taste,” Bern University of Arts researchers said in their conclusion.

The music was sent into the cheese using mini-transmitters as opposed to loudspeakers. The energy of the song’s frequencies resonated inside the cheese and then the samples were submitted to a blind taste test by a culinary jury made up of chefs and other experts. 

The next step for researchers is to determine what types of hip-hop produce the best cheese. (Can we cast a vote for old J. Cole?) Will old-school jazz rap lead to a better-tasting cheese than the blown-out Broward bass of the last few years? Is cheese an old-head?

“The idea is now to take 5 or 10 cheeses and put hip hop on them and then compare,” said the appropriately named cheesemaker behind the study, Beat Wampfler.