Cooking with Cheese

When used as an ingredient in cooking, cheese can add both flavor and texture: either unctuousness or crispness, depending on circumstances. In most cases, we want the cheese to melt and either mix evenly with other ingredients or spread over a surface. A certain giving cohesiveness is part of the pleasure of melted cheese. Stringy cheese can be enjoyable on pizzas, but a nuisance in more formal dishes. To understand cheese cooking, we need to understand the chemistry of melting.