JARLSBERG: Scientists Engineered This Cheese in a Lab — Then It Conquered the World 🧀 #shorts

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Most great cheeses took centuries to evolve. This one was engineered in a university laboratory in 1956. It's called Jarlsberg, Norway's most famous cheese.

[00:00:11]In the mid-1800s, Norwegian farmers in Vestfold County had developed a Swiss-style cheese with large holes, but by the early 1900s, the recipe had been lost. In 1956, [music] Professor Ole Martin Østgård at the Agricultural University of Norway set out to bring [music] it back. His team studied bacterial cultures, fermentation temperatures, and aging conditions, and invented an entirely new type of cheese.

[00:00:36]They named it [music] Gjetost, a deliberate cross between Gouda and Emmental. The holes are formed by a specific bacterium, >> [music] >> Propionibacterium freudenreichii, which produces carbon dioxide gas as the cheese ages, creating the characteristic large round eyes. It is produced only in Norway and shipped to every licensed factory in the world, including producers [music] in Ireland and Ohio.

[00:00:58]Today, Jarlsberg accounts for 80% of all Norwegian cheese exports. It is sold in over 30,000 supermarkets [music] in the United States alone. A cheese born in science, built to travel, loved everywhere. Follow for more cheese stories you won't believe are real.