As food writers, we're used to coming up with creative ways to talk about food. We've established the words we want to stay far away from -- like "moist" and "nom nom" -- and we do our best to not overuse basic, but absolutely necessary, food descriptors like "delicious." Usually, we're thrilled to come up with original ways to talk about food. But when it comes to the new cheddar cheese lexicon developed by Mary Ann Drake of the North Carolina State University Sensory Service Center, we think we'd like to stick to the more conventional -- even played out -- terminology that we're used to.
Anyone who's really into cheese -- and we're not talking Kraft orange cheddar here -- knows that a fine block of cheddar or brie or goat is complex, multi-faceted and layered in flavors. Rather than rely on the age-old cheese words like salty, balanced or creamy, Drake came up with more, er, illustrative words to describe cheese taste and aromatics. The list she came up with is vivid (and not so pleasant). While her descriptors might be successful in fine-tuning the delicate flavors of beautiful cheeses, they've failed at making them appetizing in the least. Basically, they make us never want to eat cheese again.
Here are the eight worst ways anyone could possibly describe cheddar (even if they're 100 percent spot on):
Pretty bad, right?
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