Blue Molds Penicillium roqueforti, as its
name suggests, is what gives sheep’s milk
Roquefort cheese its veins of blue. It and its
cousin P. glaucum also color the interior of
Stilton and Gorgonzola and the surface of
many aged goat cheeses with the complex
pigment produced in their fruiting structures.
The blue penicillia are apparently unique in
their ability to grow in the low-oxygen (5%,
compared to 21% in the air) conditions in
small fissures and cavities within cheese, a
habitat that echoes the place that gave
Roquefort its mold in the first place: the
fissured limestone caves of the Larzac. The
typical flavor of blue cheese comes from the
mold’s metabolism of milk fat, of which P.
roqueforti breaks up 10 to 25%, liberating
short-chain fatty acids that give the peppery
feel to sheep’s milk and goat milk blues, and
breaking the longer chains and converting
them into substances (methyl ketones and
alcohols) that give the characteristic blue
barry
(Barry)
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