On Food and Cooking

Stringiness Melted cheese becomes stringy
when mostly intact casein molecules are
cross-linked together by calcium into long,
rope-like fibers that can stretch but get stuck
to each other. If the casein has been attacked
extensively by ripening enzymes, then the
pieces are too small to form fibers; so well-
aged grating cheeses don’t get stringy. The
degree of cross-linking also matters: a lot and
the casein molecules are so tightly bound to
each other that they can’t give with pulling,
and simply snap apart; a little and they pull
apart right away. The cross-linking is
determined by how the cheese was made: high
acidity removes calcium from the curd, and
high moisture, high fat, and high salt help
separate casein molecules from each other. So
the stringiest cheeses are moderate in acidity,
moisture, salt, and age. The most common
stringy cheeses are intentionally fibrous
mozzarella, elastic Emmental, and Cheddar.
Crumbly cheeses like Cheshire and Leicester,