Features of making cheese Marual. Nutritional value and composition, benefits and harms when consumed. How it is eaten, interesting facts about the variety.
Marual is a little-known French soft cheese made from raw cow's milk. Taste - spicy, intensifying depending on the degree of ripening; texture - soft, pasty; the flesh is a delicate yellowish color. The crust is brownish-red or pinkish-brown, thin, embossed, with parallel stripes. The smell is pungent, it is characterized as musky or resembling rotting fruit. The shape of the head resembles a cobblestone used to lay out the pavements. Additional names: marol, maray, the miracle of Marual and truly French "vieux paut", which literally means "old canal".
How is Maroual cheese made?
From 7 liters of raw materials, a head weighing 700 g can be obtained. To purify cow's milk, food factories carry out pasteurization, heating to 60 ° C for an hour. Farms make Marual cheese, like other varieties with a strong smell, from raw milk.
Algorithm for cooking Marual cheese:
- The feedstock is heated to 30-33 ° C, thermophilic starter culture, mold cultures and rennet are added for curdling. It takes 45 minutes to form the kale.
- To make Marual cheese, the cala is cut into cubes, mixed, maintaining a constant temperature, the cheese mass is allowed to sink to the bottom and the grains are reduced, only then the whey is disposed of.
- Self-pressing is used. The molds are turned over 5-6 times within 16-24 hours.
- Salting is carried out in 2 stages. First, the "bricks" are wiped from all sides with 20% brine using a soft cloth, collecting the flowing liquid. The heads are left to dry at room temperature, and dipped into the brine the next day. This helps to obtain an even salting and firm pulp.
- Fresh marual is placed in a chamber with a special microclimate (temperature - 8-12 ° C, humidity - 92-95%) for fermentation for 72-96 hours. During this time, the surface should be covered with a bluish mold. At the same time, the acidity of the cheese decreases. In the future, the mold is removed by rubbing the edges of the "brick" with a brush with elastic bristles moistened with a weak brine. With this manipulation, parallel grooves appear on the crust, giving the heads a resemblance to the cobblestones covering the pavement.
- Aging conditions: temperature - 14 ° C, humidity - 92-93%. To create a special microclimate, chambers or cellars are used.
- While the cheese is ripening, it is regularly washed with the same brine that was used from the beginning. This action is carried out 2 times a week, turning the heads. The mold fluff is removed. Thanks to this manipulation, a bacterium is activated, which gives a reddish color to the crust and a characteristic odor. The ripening time depends on the subspecies of the variety.
Depending on how the Marual cheese is prepared, consumers are offered the following options:
| Variety name | The form | Size, cm | Weight, g | Ripening time |
| Pave | "Big cobblestone" | sides - 12, 5-13, height - 6 | 720 | 5 weeks |
| Sorbais (sorbe) | "Large brick" | sides - 12, height - 4 | 540 | 4 weeks |
| Mignon (minion) | "Brick" | side - 11-11, 5 height - 3 | 380 | 4 weeks |
| Quart (quarts) | "Quarter" | sides - 6, height - 3 | 180 | up to 3 weeks |
The taste and smell of Marual cheese also changes with maturity. The more time the heads spent in the cellar, the more pronounced and richer they are. The color of the crust also changes. The longer the "rest", the redder it is.
Fasts were long then, and no one canceled daytime duties. After all, the monks not only prayed, they had to graze cattle, do repair work. Among the inhabitants of the monastery were professional blacksmiths and stone cutters, and they needed to recover.
According to another version, the history of Marual is even more ancient, and the inhabitants of the Gallic village of Maro-Ialo began to make it back in the 7th century. From French it is translated as "big meadow". This is the variety that received the name, which has survived to this day. In favor of this version, written evidence is the documents of 1245 and 1356, which say that it is the duty of the peasants to make cheese and put it in the cellars on June 24, on the day of the holy holiday - John the Baptist. And on another holiday, the day of St. Remi, which comes exactly 100 days later, the heads must be lifted and carried to the monastery as a tax.
By the way, this can explain the many subspecies of the variety. The peasants did not give away everything and ate the heads that were not yet ripe. It can be assumed that they got a spoiled product, with a lot of mold on the crust. Later, the variety conquered many royalty. It was served to the court of Philip II, Louis X and IX, Charles VI and Francis I.
Marual is not only a separate variety. Other cheeses are also prepared on its basis, for example, Boulet de Aven and Cambrai.
The official name of the product was fixed in the twentieth century in 1955, and the certificate was received in 1976. The popularity of this type of product is only growing. In 2007, more than 2000 tons were produced, of which only about 8% was made at farms for internal needs. Everything else was exported.
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