Boiling an egg is an example of a largely one-way thermodynamic operation. Entropy, in terms of eggs at least, will march inevitably towards increasedness. There just isn't a way to unboil an egg.

Consider cheese.

Cheese can be sliced, diced, melted, spread and grated. Each of these fundamental operations has traditionally been a one-way process - just like eggs.

Not any more! With the Cheese Annealer, any number of small morsels of cheese can be quickly welded back together in order to recreate a larger piece (technically known as a 'supercheese') for improved storage and knuckle-saving gratability.

Due to cheese's unique non-entropic characteristics, the cheese annealer simply heats the two edges of the cheese pieces to be combined, and using the miracle of ultrasound, maintains the various edges at a high enough temperature until they melt seamlessly into one another (some pressure may be applied to assist the process) at the bonding point.

Various settings can be applied to accommodate differing cheese consistencies, varying from the hardest parmesan, traversing the cheese gamut through to the softer cheeses, such as ripened camemberts and the runniest Brie de Meauxes (Bries de Meaux?)
-- zen_tom, May 13 2008

www.cheese.com http://www.cheese.com/
"The #1 resource for cheese!" [zen_tom, May 13 2008]

Fantastic. Use this process to make a giant cheese globe showing the origin of every variety.
-- bneal27, May 13 2008


stop playing with your food.
-- po, May 13 2008


Could you take the holes from Emmental and put them in, say, Wensleydale?
-- hippo, May 13 2008


[Hippo] that does fall under advanced welding - but I just found this in one of the Appendices from the many-paged instruction book...

"A cross-cheese joint (such as, for example Emmental and Wensleydale) may well require a tertiary cheese component, ideally a spreadable cheese, such as Dairylea, to act as a kind of flux, in preparation of the two surfaces to be joined."
-- zen_tom, May 13 2008


Hmm - Dairylea, you say? I've always used Brie-Mastic before now.
-- hippo, May 13 2008


Thank you, thank you, for saving cheesy goodness, and providing a method for multiple cheeses to be merged. Heres a bun, its vastness capable of holding all the new cheese congregations.
-- Voice, May 13 2008


Presumably cheese can be alloyed?
-- Texticle, May 14 2008


Excellent. [+]

We are particularly interested in the idea of developing eutectic cheese alloys.
-- 8th of 7, Jul 17 2012


//Cheese Annealer//

Oddly, Queso de Calatanazor is annealed, or at least case-tempered. The mature cheese is quite dense and crumbly, and has only a thin rind. The cheesemaker places the whole cheese (some of which can way in excess of 25kg) in boiling brine for about 20 minutes, then pours in cold water and leaves everything to cool down for a few hours. Afterwards, the cheese has an outer layer, about half an inch thick, which has been heat- treated and is rather like a very tough Edam. In this condition, the cheeses can be shipped without damage.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 17 2012


//some of which can way in excess of 25kg//

No weigh!
-- ytk, Jul 17 2012


No, but no whey.

In late October, they have a festival where cheesemakers compete to carry 25kg cheeses - *before* they have been treated in broiling brine - from the mayor's house to the church. This involves climbing some 127 steps. In this condition, the cheeses are still fragile and, if a cheesemaker drops or breaks his cheese in his haste, the townspeople are allowed to take the pieces.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 17 2012


I think it's safe to assume that the phrase 'revitalise your cheese stumps' could only have been generated here.
-- Phrontistery, Jul 17 2012


Unboiling an egg is simply a process of modifying the proteins and amino acids to their previous state.

While an arduous task to take care of each protein (and don't get me started on the extra work if there's a baby chicken in there) molecule by molecule it can, in theory, be done.

On another topic some cheeses are terrible at melting. They lose oils long before the proteins let loose.
-- Voice, Jul 18 2012



random, halfbakery