It doesn’t matter if it's delivery or DiGiorno — the one thing that makes or breaks your pizza order is its perfectly browned, bubbly cheese topping. And according to a new study published in the journal Food Science, mozzarella alone just won't cut it.
In what we officially consider to be the best job ever, researchers from the University of Auckland tested to see how the properties of a variety of cheese not typically used in a pizzeria — Cheddar, Colby, Edam, Emmental, Gruyere, and Provolone — might affect the end result.
"Consumers and pizza manufacturers like their pizza to look a certain way, the discrete patches of that toasty cheese color and a uniform golden-brown background," said Dr. Bryony James, an associate professor of chemicals and materials engineering at the University of Auckland, in an explanation of her research. "So actually getting that repeatedly everytime is something [we can do if we] understand the compositional properties of cheese."
And for the most part, she did. James and her research team found that the elasticity, free oil, moisture, water activity and transition temperature influenced a cheese's color. Cheddar, Colby, and Edam ranked low on the list for their limited elasticity, which means they didn't blister or bubble, while Gruyere, Provolone, and Emmental, were oily enough to keep from burning in the oven.
Mozzarella on its own burns pretty easy, so the perfect cheese topping, James said, is actually a mix of that and either Gruyere, Provolone, or Emmental. There's just one little thing: It may not taste good. Instead of using a sensory panel, or having people judge the appearance, flavor, and texture of pizza, researchers used a machine to derive its data.
In the mean time, take comfort in the fact that oregano oil, a pizza ingredient used to give it that drool-worthy smell, possibly prevents norovirus, also known as winter vomiting disease. It's the leading cause of vomiting and diarrhea in the world. For real.
The bottom line: Science has pizza in our heart now that we know they're working hard to narrow down the ingredients worth using.
You can watch James' full research explanation in the video below.