Not too long ago, Swiss cheese was on the brink. Its iconic hole-ridden body was filling in: the caverns that had for so many centuries dotted the alpine mainstay were shrinking, or worse – disappearing altogether. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

A solution was needed – but the problem was deeper than it first seemed. Before scientists could figure out a way to save the cheesy Swiss holes – or, as cheese aficionados sometimes call them, “eyes” – they first needed to understand why they existed in the first place.

As it turned out, that would be more difficult than expected.

Holey smokes

Swiss cheeses have been famously holey for centuries – and precisely why that is has been a mystery for just as long.

“The qua

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