why does cheese that was suspended into a soup (e.g., parmesan in minestrone or the cheeses in French onion) stick to everything (spoon, bowl) in clumps and get thick but not in a soup like cheddar broccoli soup?

Question

What causes it the sticking/clumping? Is it cheese type specific? Soup base specific? Is there a specific chemical reaction?

It’s my limited understanding that almost all cheeses start the same (the same bacteria that causes body odor and rennet) and you get different types of cheese based on how it’s aged/finished.

Edit: solved. It’s a case of having emulsification or not in the soup. This article does a good job explaining the process: [https://www.seriouseats.com/food-lab-broccoli-cheddar-cheese-soup](https://www.seriouseats.com/food-lab-broccoli-cheddar-cheese-soup)

In: Other

Answer 1

Different cheeses have different structures at a molecular level. Think about it. Parmesan is a “hard” cheese, it’s very dry and doesn’t cut as smoothly as cheddar. There are also “soft” cheeses, like brie, that barely hold their shape at room temperature. The way the cheeses are made affect how all the proteins and other bits that make up the cheese are put together. Since they have different structures, they melt very differently.

But also note that not all soups are equal.

In minestrone or French onion soup, you add cheese to the soup at the end, near the time you serve it if not at the same time. Sometimes in French onion soup, you’re meant to broil the cheese. That causes a a whole different set of processes than “melting”. In these applications, the cheese never really loses its solidity, it just gets kind of close to losing it.

Cheddar broccoli soup involves making a sauce out of the cheese. Part of that involves adding flour, but there’s a more important part: you’re meant to completely melt the cheese. You add the cheese DURING cooking, which means it spends a lot more time in heat and breaks down much more thoroughly. The flour thickens the sauce, so it takes on a texture that *seems* like melted cheese, but it’s really “melted cheese plus other things”.

If you put cheese in your French Onion soup in the middle, while it’s still being cooked, it’d melt too. Apply heat to any cheese long enough and it’ll separate. But that might not mean the dish is as pleasant, because sometimes the texture of “slightly melted” cheese is desirable.