ESPCI web site
Uneven maturation and friction make Swiss cheese shavings resemble jagged flowers.
“Tête de moine” (Monk’s Head) is traditionally eaten or served by scraping the top of the cheese wheel with a specialized tool, using a circular motion. This technique produces a shaving that curls like a jagged flower, almost reminiscent of a rolled lettuce leaf. Researchers from the PMMH and SIMM laboratories now describe how this “curd-spectacular” flower is formed. They used the traditional tool to create these cheese flowers and modeled the metal dynamics on a two-dimensional surface with similar properties to cheese. Their results show that friction varies between the periphery and the center of the wheel due to the maturation process: the core stays fresher for longer. The drier and harder periphery yields more easily to stress, causing thickness variations at the edges of the shavings, giving these flowers their characteristic jagged appearance.
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