Until a few centuries ago, cheesemakers used dried pieces of the actual abomasal lining, or sometimes soaked it in brine to make an extract, or ground it to a paste or powder. This comparatively unrefined rennet had strong effects on the character of the finished cheese. Unlike modern purified rennets or rennet equivalents, it contained not just chymosin but a bouquet of other enzymes designed to tackle other parts of the milk besides casein. From a flavor standpoint, the most important ones are lipases, or fat-digesting enzymes. Part of their role is to chop up the long, mild-tasting fatty-acid molecules into shorter ones that are aggressively pungent. Short-chain fatty acids are responsible for the piquant bite of provolone and a few other Italian cheeses (nowadays, manufacturers add lipase to cheesemilk in refined form for just this purpose). We can pretty certainly surmise that fresh cheeses made with older versions of lamb, kid, or calf rennet were not as bland and unindividualized as the ones we’re used to. Their flavor must have varied sharply with the lipase content of the rennet and the way different farmers prepared the rennet for use.
Wherever fresh cheeses existed, up to the dawn of modern agriculture they remained simple peasant standbys, only marginally less perishable than the milk from which they were made. The earliest means developed to preserve them more than a few days was brining. Brined cheeses more or less resembling Greek feta are nearly as pervasive and defining a culinary feature of the eastern Mediterranean and lands to the east as yogurt. What sets them apart from the ripened or aged cheeses more familiar to Western cheese lovers is that immersing the curd in brine keeps it from undergoing a progression of further enzymatic changes that would otherwise cause it to knit into a smooth, close, homogeneous texture. Feta and its many Diverse Sources Belt counterparts retain much of the looser casein structure of fresh cheese.
When dairying and cheesemaking moved north to colder environments, the technique of brine preservation didn’t. The climate difference meant that unbrined (or only very lightly salted) fresh cheeses had a better chance of lasting more than a few days without spoiling. They assumed great importance throughout both the Northeastern and Northwestern Cow Belts of Europe, where temperatures were generally favorable to fermentation by mesophilic bacteria, or kinds suited to conditions slightly cooler than those needed by the thermophilic kinds endemic to the Middle East. But as pointed out earlier, the role of fresh cheeses was to decline in western regions with the arrival of modern commercial dairying geared toward an urban market. Both drinkable fresh milk and specialized ripened cheeses took on an unprecedented prominence as cash crops. Especially in the English-speaking world, sour milk and fresh cheeses became archaic or marginalized for much of the nonrural population. It was chiefly from eastern Scandinavia through the Baltic lands and Mittel-europa into Russia and Ukraine that they remained a universally loved everyday sustenance.
Fresh cheeses must have existed in North America as early as colonists and cows, but they certainly were not stars of the commercial dairying scene that emerged within half a century of independence. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks occasionally give recipes for making some kind of fresh cheese—sometimes called “cottage cheese”—at home. Often there is a Philadelphia or Pennsylvania connection, as shown by the fact that nearly all authors mention “smearcase” (from Pennsylvania German Schmierkäse) as a familiar if less elegant name. It also came to be called “Dutch,” probably meaning “Pennsylvania Dutch.” The cheese itself usually is a simple cousin of the Fresh White Cheese with Cultures—milk soured to a clabber, or soft curd, drained of whey, and worked smooth. A richer cousin, “cream cheese,” also has been a Philadelphia specialty since at least the early nineteenth century.
Cream cheese seems to have achieved commercial popularity in the last decades of the century. But Ralph Selitzer’s invaluable history The Dairy Industry in America reports that cottage cheese was of minor importance until World War I, when the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture launched a campaign for “rediscovering” it as a thrifty, nutritious use for skim milk.
The moment could not have been better, because the nation was also being seized by its first infatuation with the cult of extreme slimness. Mass-produced cottage cheese appeared on the scene just in time to be hailed as the dieter’s friend, an association that has never vanished. Cream cheese also underwent a timely makeover in the mid-1920s when manufacturers introduced the new “hot pack” technology (this page) that would extend its shelf life and enable it to emerge as an inexpensive all-purpose “cocktail spread” base.
For the better part of the twentieth century, these two products were virtually the only fresh cheeses known to most Americans. The great exceptions were the Ashkenazic Jews and other immigrants from the Northeastern Cow Belt who began coming to major cities after about 1880 and were entrenched ethnic presences by the time immigration was cut off by congressional fiat in 1924. Fresh cheeses were too important a part of their heritage to be given up, either in their own right or as a cooking ingredient. It was Jewish food lovers who kept alive a taste for more flavorful, meaty alternatives to watery American-style cottage cheese. The usual versions of these well-flavored fresh cheeses were generally called “farmer cheese” and “pot cheese.” They went into many kinds of dumplings, pastry or blintz fillings, sweet and savory puddings, and fritters. People often tossed a few spoonfuls with hot cooked noodles, or ate a generous serving as an accompaniment to raw vegetables. For several generations American Ashkenazim also formed a loyal clientele for cream cheese fresher-tasting and less gummy-textured than the hot-pack version.
This heritage was fading fast when reinforcements started to arrive during the final throes of the Soviet Union. With them came not only many of the same cooking traditions but enough of a taste for good fresh cheese to fuel some small-scale manufacturing in major cities. Today domestically produced Russian-style tvorog is probably the best choice in nearly any recipe calling for any cheese from the cottage-cheese clan.
Brined white cheeses have continued to occupy the same central role throughout most of the Diverse Sources Belt as nonbrined fresh cheeses in Eastern Europe. They remained little known in this country—people still vaguely call them all “feta” and assume that they are or ought to be Greek—until waves of immigration began after 1965 from many regions where brined cheese was simply an indispensable part of culinary life. You can now buy versions imported from many countries—even France, where cheesemakers have taken to manufacturing brined sheep’s-milk cheese for worldwide export, using surplus milk that would otherwise go into Roquefort. Their culinary uses almost exactly parallel those of fresh cheeses in Eastern European traditions, down to pastry fillings (most famously, in such phyllo-wrapped specialties as the Greek tiropita and the small cylindrical Turkish sigara böregˇi) and the partnership with fresh raw vegetables.
Generally speaking, American cheesemakers have been slow to recognize what wonderful opportunities await someone with the initiative to make first-class fresh or brined cheese. The inspiring exception is the goat contingent. Goat cheeses are the fastest-growing segment of the artisanal-cheese industry, and the most popular of all are the fresh young versions that most people firmly if illogically assume to be synonymous with “chèvre.” In other words, there’s a market ready to be instructed in the pleasures of very good fresh cheese. Many of its members would equally adore the brined cousins of fresh cheese if they had ever tasted a really excellent Greek feta or Bulgarian sirene. And there is the added advantage that today’s small-scale cheesemakers have a sizable pool of knowledge about such subtleties as flavor-affecting enzymes and particular combinations of lactic-acid bacteria. I would not be surprised if something like a minor golden age dawns in the next few years for fresh cheeses. In the meanwhile, making a few simple versions of your own is an eye-opener.
SORTING OUT NAMES AND CHEESES
Forewarned is forearmed: There is no such thing as consistency in popular names for the many different fresh cheeses. None except cottage cheese
and cream cheese has been assigned a formal “standard of identity” in the FDA Code of Federal Regulations, and even those specifications are broad enough that things barely resembling the most familiar supermarket cottage and cream cheese versions could conceivably qualify. Besides, shopkeepers and restaurateurs trying to explain the unfamiliar to English-speaking patrons inevitably get their own off-the-cuff translations going—e.g., “cottage cheese” for Indian panir (which isn’t a cheese at all, much less cottage cheese). I hope that the following list will help you either make sense of some terms or accept the limitations of sense. All entries are for varieties of fresh cheese—meaning unripened cheese made by the action of lactic-acid bacteria, enzymes, or both—with the exception of ricotta and queso blanco, which defy easy classification.
BRINED OR PICKLED CHEESES See this page. You will most often find them labeled “feta.” As of 2008 the use of that name on labels will be (illogically) restricted to brined cheeses made in, or at least shipped from, Greece. I doubt that this will affect informal signs on store shelves, but you may want to know some other names by which to search for brined cheeses in ethnic groceries. In most stores catering to émigrés from Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union, look for “brinza” or “bryndza.” In many parts of the old Diverse Sources Belt, from the Balkans to the Central Asian republics, brined cheeses are so universally taken for granted that people simply call them “cheese”—e.g., sirene in Bulgaria, gibneh or jibna in much of the Arab world, or “white cheese”—as in Turkey, where they’re collectively beyaz peynir. This makes for communication problems in some neighborhood shops. Try to find out the source of the milk; the most lusciously creamy brined cheese comes from sheep’s milk.
CHÈVRE In American parlance, fresh young goat cheese, though in French any goats’-milk cheese is fromage de chèvre.
CLABBER OR CLABBERED MILK A regional (mostly Southern) term for milk curdled by the natural action of ambient bacteria. Before pasteurization became universal, this happened pretty quickly in all parts of the Deep South, especially during the warm months. People either drank clabber while it was no thicker than cultured buttermilk or let it sit until the curd was firm enough to eat as fresh cheese, often sweetened and accompanied with rich cream.
COTTAGE CHEESE This has come to be the standard American term for most fresh cheeses made by lactic-acid fermentation, usually in combination with curdling by rennet or some other enzyme source. But a shortcut version can also be made through direct injection of an acid, which eliminates the small amount of flavor nuance that most mass-produced cottage cheese has to begin with. Read labels and look for the words “cultured milk” and “enzymes” (not some weaselly term like “natural flavoring”). The main thing that distinguishes American cottage cheese from most other fresh cheeses of the world is that the curd remains in small, slightly chewy bits instead of forming a smooth paste.
There is really no way to tell what any brand will taste like except by buying some and sampling it. The milk is usually nonfat or reduced-fat, often with the addition of nonfat milk solids. Manufacturers loosely distinguish between “large-curd” and “small-curd” cottage cheese, referring to the way the curd is cut during heating. The large-curd kind contains more rennet and has a shorter setting time, meaning that it stays blander. The other develops more acidity—that is, a livelier flavor—through longer fermentation. “Creamed” cottage cheese has a small amount of cream (usually thin half-and-half) worked in to moisten the finished curds. Most cottage cheese is also lightly salted.
In American usage, POT CHEESE AND FARMER CHEESE are slightly different versions of cottage cheese, but there is no general agreement on how they differ from one another. Get them all figured out in one part of the country and you may scratch your head when you encounter them someplace else. But broadly speaking, both have more flavor and character than the usual run of supermarket cottage cheese. In the Northeast, farmer (or farmer’s) cheese usually has a fine, grainy, homogeneous texture while pot cheese contains larger and more distinct curds. Both are usually drier and cheesier than other versions of cottage cheese. One kind of farmer cheese is pressed very firm and dry (somewhat like the lean, meaty old-fashioned fresh cheese called “hoop cheese”) and sold in a kind of flat lozenge shape. Most farmer cheese, however, is softer and moister. I usually find American pot cheese and farmer cheese much better for both eating and cooking than other forms of cottage cheese, though not as good as Russian-style tvorog (this page).
In all versions of cottage/pot/farmer cheese, I look for a good lactic-acid flavor and a bit of texture or bite. Without these, it’s pretty vacuous.
CREAM CHEESE Any bland, rich-textured fresh cheese made with a cream-milk mixture can technically be labeled “cream cheese.” But today the name almost universally refers to the standardized result of “hot pack” processing (this page)—not just in the United States but in dozens or hundreds of other venues, testifying to the global reach of Kraft’s “Philadelphia” brand. Its characteristic feature, aside from the somewhat gluey texture conferred by stabilizers, is a distinctive cooked flavor irresistible to fans. Explore cheese stores for the unfortunately rare “cold pack” versions, or make your own for a real revelation. Ignore anything purporting to be nonfat or reduced-fat cream cheese.
CURD CHEESE General British term for all fresh cheeses of the cottage-cheese type.
FROMAGE BLANC, FROMAGE FRAIS French for “white cheese” and “fresh cheese,” referring to various unripened French cheeses of fresh, delicate flavor and smooth, close texture. Several United States producers now make similar cheeses labeled “fromage blanc.” Be warned that there is no single agreed-on standard, so one maker’s version may differ markedly from another’s.
JUNKET Originally, a loose term for fresh curds from cream or milk, lightly drained in a rush basket (French jonquette). By the early nineteenth century it usually meant sweetened milk curdled with rennet and eaten while barely set with a topping of fresh or clotted cream (see recipe). “Curds and whey” as a sales pitch often referred not to plain curds and whey but a heavily sweetened kind of junket sold by London street vendors (Henry Mayhew’s 1851 survey of London street sellers gives the usual proportions as half a pound of sugar to eight quarts of milk). In 1915 a canny manufacturer registered “Junket” as a trademarked name for its rennet tablets, thereby taking the term out of circulation as a general description. As explained on this page, plain Junket brand rennet tablets are what I prefer for renneting fresh cheeses.
NEUFCHTEL Another good name traduced by American sales initiative. In France it is an estimable mold-ripened young appellation contrôlée cheese from Neufchâtel in the Bray district of Normandy. In this country it now refers to a spreadable fresh cheese made by the same hot-pack method as most commercial cream cheese, but with less milkfat, fewer calories, and if anything a gummier effect.
QUARK OR QUARGEL The general German term for all kinds of fresh unripened cheese. The Austrian equivalent is Topfen. On home ground, the character of the cheese varies from region to region—drier, creamier, finer-textured, grainier, curdier. (Usually, however, Topfen more resembles our farmer cheese or Russian tvorog.) Today there are several American-made versions, usually very smooth-textured and mildly tart. As with our “fromage blanc,” there are no accepted manufacturing standards, and you should expect great variation among different brands.
QUESO BLANCO, QUESO FRESCO Spanish for “white cheese” and “fresh cheese.” In the Latin American countries, these terms can embrace a spectrum of cheeses. In the United States, they don’t have an absolutely fixed meaning but nearly always refer to milk completely or partly curdled by acid precipitation. Sometimes queso blanco or fresco also undergoes a little exposure to rennet (or other enzyme sources) and/or lactic-acid bacteria. But it is essentially one of the noncheese cheeses like Indian panir. Very mild-flavored and rather rubbery, it is popular with Mexican and many other Latin American cooks because it keeps its shape instead of melting when c
ooked.
RICOTTA Also an anomaly on the cheese map. True Italian ricotta differs from real cheese in containing virtually no casein. This is because it is made from what’s left after the casein has been removed from milk in cheesemaking: the whey. Reheating whey (hence the name “ricotta,” or “recooked”) precipitates the water-soluble proteins (lactoglobulins and lactalbumins) to a white substance distantly resembling cheese curd, but moister and more fine-grained in texture. The yield is very low compared to that from true curd precipitation, though it increases slightly with higher acidity (lower pH); vinegar is often added to the whey for ricotta for more efficient separation.
In Italy, industrial ricotta-making is a thrifty form of recycling what would otherwise go to waste. The best comes from sheep’s-milk whey. There is also good buffaloes’-milk ricotta. That from cows’ milk is the blandest and least interesting. Most commercial American “ricotta” (so called) is a very different, fairly insipid product. This is another of those cases where manufacturers are held to no particular standard, and what most of them seem to have in mind is a sort of imitation cottage cheese made by acidifying whole or skim milk (sometimes part whey) with vinegar or another souring agent. If the result is too watery it gets thickened with gums. The usual recipes for homemade ricotta in American cookbooks are no closer to whey-based ricotta. They call for curdling heated milk with lemon juice, and produce something very like the Indian chhenna. Real whey-protein ricotta has an altogether different texture, thin-bodied and not particularly cheesy.
I have not tried to give a recipe for true ricotta because none of the fresh-cheese recipes in this book yields enough whey to make more than a few spoonfuls. If you hanker to make your own, chhenna isn’t any more inauthentic than the expedients in other cookbooks. But what I really recommend is searching out fresh sheep’s-milk ricotta (not to be confused with the hard cheese called ricotta salata) in a cheese store. It will spoil you for other kinds.
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