Quest to find the ultimate cheese roll

Scientists have been asked for the first time to unlock the mysteries of a quintessentially southern institution.

Researchers in the University of Otago's food science department are preparing to analyse what a panel of culinary experts will decide is the South's best cheese roll.

• Video: How to make a cheese roll

The roll will be chosen from entries in the Ultimate Cheese Roll Competition, being run as part of the New Zealand International Science Festival this month.

Food science head of department Prof Phil Bremer, who prefers his rolls with elastic but not stringy cheese, said his team would subject the winning roll to a raft of tests to determine what makes it the best there is.

Among the myriad scientific and consumer perception tests, they will consider how the ingredients affect flavour, colour and texture, and how their combination and quantity contribute to the melt, flow and cohesion of the cheese.

The tests would be helped by knowing the ingredients of the roll. Prof Bremer accepted there was a very good chance that the winner would guard jealously their recipe, and assured they would be handled with "absolute discretion".

Judging panel member and Otago Polytechnic hospitality programme manager Tony Heptinstall, a British migrant who had his first cheese roll in Tekapo in the early 1990s, said he would not be surprised if some entrants deviated from the basic condensed milk, onion soup, and cheese mix.

But there really was no need: "This is a familiar comfort food, a favourite that stimulates the five or six areas of taste on the tongue, and with that taste and tradition, it works well."

Many other countries had their own cheesy snacks, but the lower South Island was the only place where a cheese mix was combined with rolled, sliced bread, he said.

"It really is something to be proud of and celebrated. The North Island might have cheese on toasted bread, but you have to come south to see that bread rolled up into the authentic cheese roll."