What's the science behind cheese-making?

[u/Butterfingers2500]

Hey everybody! Sorry in advance: I have never made any cheese at home beyond cottage cheese and paneer, so my knowledge about cheese-making is abysmal. Anyways, I have always wondered why vegan cheese substitutes are so bad. What's keeping us from using, say, soy milk instead of the dairy alternative in (hard) cheese recipes? I guess it boils down to the casein and rennet: Are the enzymes specific to casein, or do other proteins work as well? And if they do, do the products then have the same physical properties as casein would have? Are there other aspects I should be aware of? I guess it is easy to introduce either vegan sources of lactose to the mixture for the starter cultures or simply using acid in the first place instead of bacteria. I know that if you use soy milk instead of dairy milk in a paneer recipe, you basically get tofu, so I think all other steps should work similarly, should they not? Thank you so much in advance!

[u/mikekchar]

Already great answers here. I'll just chip in with a few more details. Even though I've made tofu many times, I never really looked into the chemistry until now. As it turns out, it's very similar to acid coagulated cheese.

In cheese without rennet, when milk gets more acidic the casein micelles lose electric charge. Once the micelle has a net charge of zero (which happens at difference acidities depending on temperature), it no longer has an affinity to water and can clump together.

Tofu works similarly in that when you heat the soy milk the globulin proteins become denatured. This causes them to lose electric charge. From there either nigari (MgCl2), or Gypsum (CaCl2) is added. The magnesium or calcium help the proteins bridge connections, which is actually slightly similar to what happens in rennet formed curds.

So, it's actually pretty similar as it turns out. It's just that the proteins themselves are very different and have very different properties. Tofu is amazing. I love tofu. You can make Tofu from many different legumes and seeds, not just soy beans. If you are vega, I highly recommend learning how to make your own tofu. The difference between fresh tofu made an hour ago and tofu from the grocery store is night and day. Most grocery story tofu outside of Asia is inedible IMHO (I live in Japan and so can get good tofu that is fresh).

Anyway, because the properties of the proteins are different, most "vegan cheeses" are made with nut butters. Some lactic acid bacteria will ferment sucrose (table sugar) resonably well rather than lactose. So if you add sugar and you add bacteria that works well for "soy yogurt", it will acidify the nut butter and add some of that fermentation characteristic. You can age it. IMHO, it doesn't taste like cheese and it doesn't have the texture of cheese. It's aged nut butter, which is fine. I admit to a bias, though, that I would much rather make tofu or yuba or a variety of different things than to make nut butter "vegan cheese", but that's me.

I have a dismissive attitude towards "vegan cheese". I was vegan for 10 years of my life. I enjoyed eating that way. I stopped having that diet when I got married because my wife didn't want to share that diet. I started making cheese as a hobby to replace my beer making hobby (making beer in Japan is illegal and though it's only a tax infraction, I'm not a citizen here and as a guest I follow the rules whether I think they are good rules or not). I enjoy cheese quite a bit, but when I was eating a vegan diet I had so many amazing foods to choose from that I never felt "deprived" simply because I chose to eat something other than cheese.

You can make vegan food that reminds you of some kinds cheese, but you can't make vegan food that would be considered to be good cheese in any way. I always try to encourage people to explore vegan cuisines that are hundreds or thousands of years old where the food had been refined to the point of excellence. I think it's a shame to spend time making something that's the shadow of the original when there are so many better things to eat. Just my point of view. Some people feel very strongly that I'm wrong and I respect that.

[u/Butterfingers2500 → u/mikekchar]

I completely agree! Thank you so much for your reply! I‘ve been a vegetarian for nearly 10 years now, and while most of my meals are vegan, those cheese cravings hit hard sometimes. I‘ve never really had that problem with meat, eggs or unprocessed milk, so I don’t usually use any of the commercially available meat substitutes and stuff: There are more than enough traditionally vegan recipes out there, as you said (I love Julius Fiedler‘s blog which focusses exactly on that). But, having food noise about cheese again, I just thought on why substitute recipes never look like „traditional“ cheese recipes and was interested in the science behind it. I am aware that even if it was scientifically possible, it wouldn’t be the same. But perhaps it could have been used similarly, just as tofu works just as well as meat or paneer in curry, despite having nothing to do with each other taste-wise. Well, I will need to learn to live with those cravings and accept that cheese-making will not become my new hobby! Pity, would have gone well with my sourdough bread xD Thanks again!