>>21431238
>or even buttermilk brined chicken.
That's just the Ashkenazim, Mizrahim and Sephardim, though they do make up like 90% of all Jews lmao
Other kinds of Jews are okay with meat and dairy together as long as they're from different species, following the same proscription as those groups do with fish and dairy together. The reason the majority do it that way is the concept of marit ayin IE the appearance of evil (literally "appearance to the eye"). Basically, if it looks like something forbidden, it is also forbidden.
Since Jews don't eat pork and the only meat that could be mistaken for pork is chicken, the edict doesn't apply to a minority of Jews since chicken itself isn't banned under marit ayin but for those three groups mentioned above, they avoid it anyway just to be double safe.
The hypocrisy comes in with the idea of "kosher" turkey ham/bacon. If marit ayin applies to chicken + dairy because it looks like the possible combination of a kid cooked in its mother's milk, surely turkey made to look like pork would fit under this same rule to them but no. It's bizarre. Those minority Jews shun turkey bacon/ham but are a-okay with a chicken cheesesteak while the majority hold the opposite view.
>>21428583
Not a bonding agent but a coagulant and those same groups I mentioned above and indeed all Jewish groups I'm aware of other than the Orthodox Union, a tiny subset of Ashkenazi Judaism, are okay with animal derived rennet provided it comes from a kosher animal because rennet is an enzyme and not flesh. The OU consider no parmigiano reggiano to be kosher but other groups do. Italkim, the native Jews of Italy, are a-okay with the stuff.
>>21428599
Not acid. Acid set cheeses will neither stretch nor melt. Think paneer, the most common acid set cheese. It doesn't melt. Rennet is an enzyme but it does come from the stomach.
