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Hip hop is 'best music for improving taste of cheese'

The Local Switzerland
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Hip hop is 'best music for improving taste of cheese'
The wheel of cheese that 'listened' to hip hop for six months. Photo: AFP

In case you needed any more proof that rock is dead, then this could be it...

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The researchers behind an unusual – and high-profile – Swiss study which looked into what type of music is best when it comes to improving the taste of cheese have come up with an answer: hip hop.

The finding comes after cheesemaker Beat Wampfler from Switzerland's Emmental region – with assistance from the University of the Arts in Bern – spent six months playing eight wheels of his 'Muttenglück' Emmental cheese different genres of music.

This included everything from Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ to the Mozart Opera ‘The Magic Flute’.

Read also: 15 facts you may not have known about Swiss cheese

The experiment then culminated at two separate tastings involving experts and cheese aficionados on Thursday.

Both panels gave the gong for best cheese to the wheel which had been serenaded with the 1991 hip hop classic ‘Jazz, We’ve Got’ by A Tribe Called Quest.

“The hip hop cheese was perceived as sweeter and fruitier,” said Wampfler after the results came in.

The hip hop cheese also had notably large holes – or 'eyes' as there are known in the business.

“It gives you a push to keep going,” said Wampfler of the results of his research. But he stressed he wasn’t looking at commercializing the idea.

Whether the study was actually scientific is a moot point.

For Michael Harenberg from the University of the Arts in Bern, the research was somewhere between art and culinary science. And Tilo Kühn, professor of food processing technology at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences told agricultural news outlet Schweizer Bauer that further tests were now required.

He added hat the production of the cheese would also need to be further standardized.

Cheesemaker Beat Wampfler and the 'hip hop' cheese. Photo: AFP

Meanwhile, whether intentionally or not, the experiment has proven to be great marketing for Switzerland’s Emmental cheese – and for A Tribe Called Quest of course.

Read also: Swiss producer makes pink cheese for Chinese market

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