{"id":4985,"date":"2011-03-03T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=4985"},"modified":"2016-02-03T16:30:12","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T21:30:12","slug":"hue-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/hue-bet\/","title":{"rendered":"Hue Bet"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do French Mimolette, British Red Leicester, and certain Wisconsin cheddars have in common? Besides being cheese, that is.<\/p>\n

Different as they are, all these cheeses have a deep orange hue. And all share the same coloring agent: annatto, a tropical plant whose seeds have been used to color everything from Aztec paintings to cosmetics and food.<\/p>\n

Some 17th-century British producers began using annatto to improve the appearance of pale, late-season cheeses made from milk that was low in beta carotene. \u201cThe [nutrients] in the Cheshire soil produced a deeper hue in the milk of the cows that grazed those pastures, and [as a result] the cheese fetched a premium over the cheddars and Wensleydales,\u201d explains author Steve Jenkins, specialty food buyer at New York City\u2019s Fairway Market<\/a>. \u201cThose other producers wanted their cheeses to have the same tint, and they got that from the annatto seed.\u201d<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t impress the Cheshire cheesemakers, however.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey agreed in Cheshire that any cheese that was colored would have to use a lot of coloring to make it glaringly obvious that it was colored,\u201d says Ari Weinzweig of Ann Arbor, Michigan\u2013based Zingerman\u2019s<\/a>. \u201cTheir assumption was people wouldn\u2019t be interested, but those turned out to be the cheeses people seemed to want more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ever since, annatto extract has been added to milk in quantities according to the desired effect. \u201cTo make a really dark cheddar, it would be about 2\u00bd ounces of annatto per 1,000 pounds of milk,\u201d says Joe Widmer, master cheesemaker and owner of Wisconsin- based Widmer\u2019s Cheese Cellars<\/a>. But he also uses it, as do many other cheesemakers, to lightly tint other cheeses. \u201cFor brick [cheese], we use \u00bd ounce per 1,000 pounds of milk, which just turns the cheese yellow instead of bright orange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does annatto guarantee appeal? It depends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Midwest you must<\/em> have orange cheddar. That\u2019s how people know and expect it,\u201d says Liz Thorpe, vice president of Murray\u2019s Cheese<\/a> in New York. \u201cHere, there\u2019s the perception that orange cheddar might be more mass-produced and milder in flavor, while white cheddar is superior. But one is no better or worse than the other.\u201d On the other hand, Thorpe notes, \u201cNobody makes a color judgment about some cheeses, such as Mimolette.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAppearance is a crucial part of a cheese\u2019s identity,\u201d explains Bronwen Percival, a buyer for Neal\u2019s Yard Dairy<\/a> in London. \u201cCertain cheeses are always colored (Red Leicester springs to mind), whereas others, like Cheshire, can be orange or white. In the UK, orange coloring does not have the same industrial associations it does in the U.S. But it would be unusual to see an orange cheddar, even if it were produced on a large scale in a factory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Annatto enhances color\u2014but does it affect flavor, too? \u201cSome people think there\u2019s a difference,\u201d Widmer says, \u201cbut it\u2019s impossible for anyone to taste anything in 1,000 lbs. of milk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thorpe concurs. \u201cI\u2019ve done zillions of blind taste tests, and I couldn\u2019t tell whether a cheese was colored.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bottom line? \u201cAnnatto just makes cheese pretty,\u201d Jenkins says.<\/p>\n

Besides, Widmer quips, \u201cIt would be boring if you went to a party and all the cheese was white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feature Photo Credit: Fotos593<\/a> | Shutterstock<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How some cheeses came to be the color of carrots<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":25465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"coauthors":[104],"class_list":["post-4985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cheese-iq"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHue Bet - culture: the word on cheese<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How did some cheeses come to be the color of carrots? 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