Perfectly Melting Cheese Slice

Any cheese—Gruyere, blue, goat—can melt as evenly as American-style cheese, with this revelatory recipe from the cookbook Modernist Cuisine at Home, by Nathan Myhrvold and Maxime Bilet, the home-cooking follow-up to their six-volume Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. Of this recipe, they write: “By using sodium citrate, an emulsifying salt, you can make any cheese into slices that melt as perfectly as American-style sandwich cheese does. These slices are perfect for hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, vegetables, apple pie, or any other dish needing a melted cheese that doesn’t separate. You can either form the cheese into a thin sheet, or mold it into a cylinder or block for slicing later.”