Over the past 8 weeks, I’ve explored a range of different cheeses – from soft to hard and everything in between. I have learned about the history of these cheeses, how to make these cheeses, and have gained insight on why people might prefer one cheese over another.
My initial research question was: How do different textures of cheese create a unique tasting experience? I hypothesized that softer cheeses would be more popular because they feel creamier/smoother in the mouth. Each taster was asked to plug his/her nose during the tasting so as to control for texture. I then asked my participants a series of questions about how much they liked or disliked the cheese, the color of the cheese, how the cheese made them feel, and most importantly, the texture of the cheese.
As I was looking mainly at my participants’ reaction to texture, my most important quantitative data comes from the texture ratings for each cheese from dislike (1) to like (10). Below are the average ratings for each texture category: soft, soft-medium, medium, medium-hard, and hard.
Soft Cheese: 10
Soft/Medium Cheese: 6
Medium Cheese: 9
Medium/Hard Cheese: 8
Hard Cheese: 4
My results show that, on the whole, the texture of soft cheeses is preferred to the texture of hard cheeses. While there is not a strict linear decline in the average texture ratings from soft to hard, there is a clear 6-point difference between the softest cheese and the hardest cheese. There is definitely a general preference for softer textured cheese over harder textured cheese, even though the data does not show a perfect linear decline. One problem with my experiment was the limited number of participants I had access to, which could have skewed the data.
If you are interested in exploring the rest of my data from these cheese tastings and some of my qualitative findings, click the link here!
I hope you enjoyed following my cheese blog and learned something new along the way! Keep munching, cheese lovers 🙂
Exploring Cheese Textures 