Why cheese is served at room temperature

Most cheese tastes better once the cold has left it, and the people who advise on it agree on that much. Clemson University's Home and Garden Information Center says cheese flavor is best at room temperature. Wisconsin Cheese lists serving it cold among its top ten cheese myths. It says cold dulls flavor and aroma and makes textures firm and waxy. The reason has a lot to do with your nose, and knowing it makes the wait easier.

Cold holds back what you smell

The clearest explanation I found comes from someone who ages cheese for a living. Josh Windsor is an affineur and senior caves manager at Murray's Cheese in New York. He also teaches sensory evaluation at Cornell's cheese short courses. Writing in culture magazine, he separates taste, which happens on your tongue, from aroma, which reaches sensors high in your nose. He opens with the food writer Brillat-Savarin, who wrote in 1825 about eating a peach. The full aroma, he said, arrives only as you swallow.

Scientists call this retronasal olfaction. It means the aromas you pick up while you breathe out as you eat. A sniff with the food under your nose is the other route. Windsor's point about cheese follows from this. Anything you can smell has to be volatile, which means it readily turns to gas. Turning to gas takes energy. Out of the fridge, a cheese picks up that energy from the air around it. He says room temperature is often enough.

So a cold bite gives you less to smell, and you can guess what goes missing. With fewer compounds rising into your nose, Windsor says you are left mostly with texture and the basic tastes. Those are salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. Salt and tang will still come through a cold wedge. Now think of the mango and pineapple that Wisconsin Cheese lists for Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Those are not basic tastes, so by Windsor's account they need aroma to reach you.

One honest limit belongs here, because this is reasoning more than lab work. Windsor's article explains the physics but reports no measurements. Clemson and Wisconsin Cheese do not cite a study either. I looked for a controlled test of one cheese at different serving temperatures and did not find one I could read in full. That explanation is widely repeated, and I couldn't find it proven.

Texture changes too

Your mouth notices the temperature as well as your nose, and this half is easy to check for yourself. Wisconsin Cheese's firm and waxy description covers cold cheese in general. Its guide to brie says the same of a soft cheese, calling cold brie firmer and less flavorful. Jasper Hill Farm describes Cabot Clothbound as crumbly and crystalline, with a texture that turns creamy on the palate.

Firmness from the cold does have one real use, and it comes up whenever you get out a grater. The Cheese Scientist site says to grate hard cheeses like Parmigiano Reggiano, Cheddar or Gouda straight from the fridge. The firmer texture makes the job easier. You can let the grated cheese warm up before you serve or cook with it. That page offers one more exception in sliced raclette. It is high in fat and can sweat if it gets too warm, so it stays chilled until it is time to melt it.

How far the cheese has to travel

A look at the numbers shows why a few minutes on the counter will not do it. Clemson gives 35 to 40 F as the fridge range for cheese. On its storage page, Wisconsin Cheese says most cheese is best around 67 to 70 F. That leaves a climb of about 30 degrees. The fridge is also colder than the place the cheese matured. The University of Guelph's cheesemaking e-book says most firm to hard cheeses ripen at 10 to 15 C, or about 50 to 59 F. They are then stored at about 4 C, or roughly 39 F, until eaten.

Advice on timing varies, and the differences are worth knowing about. Wisconsin Cheese says around 30 minutes on its storage page and 30 minutes to an hour on its myths page. The Cheese Scientist site says an hour in general, and calls that most important for soft and semi-soft cheeses. It says 30 minutes is usually enough for semi-hard and hard ones. Clemson and Wisconsin Cheese point the other way, saying soft cheeses warm faster and hard cheeses stay cool longer. Since the sources do not settle it, 30 to 60 minutes is the range they share. With a big cold wedge of hard cheese, I would lean toward the longer end.

Getting it right at the table

A small habit or two covers almost all of this. Wisconsin Cheese says to unwrap the cheese when you take it out, which is easy to forget. Clemson says to set out only what you plan to eat. Warming and chilling the same piece over and over leaves it dry and tough. Wisconsin Cheese agrees that repeated heating and cooling hurts texture and flavor. With a large wedge, cut off what you want and leave the rest wrapped.

Pay some attention to the outside of the piece as well, since the edge is often where the most is going on. Wisconsin Cheese notes that flavor and aroma often get stronger near the rind. It also says most rinds are edible, with cloth, wax and bark as the exceptions. To test all of this, cut two small pieces from one wedge. Leave one out and keep one in the fridge. Eat them side by side and breathe out through your nose as you chew, which by Windsor's account is when the aroma reaches you.