Cottage cheese

🥚 Vegetarian

Cottage cheese is a fresh cheese with a mild flavour and a loose, creamy texture, traditionally made from skimmed milk. It grew out of rural households in Europe and North America and is now eaten in many countries.

History

The earliest pictorial evidence of cheesemaking comes from Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. A frieze about 5,000 years old, from the Temple of the Great Goddess Ninhursag, shows priests working with cow's milk and possibly preparing a curd somewhat like cottage cheese. What is well documented is that rennet, usually from animal stomachs, makes milk coagulate and separates the curds from the whey, a process that European farmers used for centuries with soured milk to make simple homestead cheeses.

As Rome expanded its empire, knowledge of cheese spread across Europe, and the Romans introduced cheesemaking to England. The ancestors of cottage cheese are these simple farmhouse cheeses, which were drained rather than pressed.

The English term first appears in 1831 in Philadelphia, linked to Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants who made fresh cheese in their homesteads, or cottages. In 1841, Anne Pickett established a small cottage-industry cheese factory in Wisconsin using milk from homestead cows. During the First World War, cottage cheese was promoted in the United States, along with other dairy products, as a way to save meat for infantry rations. After the war its consumption rose, peaking in the 1970s, when diets for weight loss became popular.

Culture

Cottage cheese is eaten on its own, with fruit or fruit purée, on toast, or in green salads, and it appears in recipes such as lasagne and a variety of desserts. Its mild taste makes it a versatile ingredient, and it is a common feature of breakfasts in English-speaking countries. In the United States it is associated with high-protein diets and with people who train seriously, and in the 21st century its popularity has grown again alongside Greek yoghurt.

Variants differ by curd size, which can be fine or large, and by the milkfat content. Low-fat and fat-free versions usually contain a little extra sugar to compensate for the flavour lost with the fat.

Legend and fact

It is often said that cottage cheese is the closest thing to the first cheese ever made, but this is a belief that is hard to verify. The story of Polyphemus, the Cyclops in Homer's Odyssey who stored milk in animal stomachs, is a literary fiction rather than historical evidence. The explanation of the name as 'cheese from a cottage' is also an attribution, since the documented evidence is only that the term appears in 1831.

Trivia

First recorded use of the term. The English name cottage cheese is documented in Philadelphia in 1831, linked to homemade cheesemaking.

Promotion during the war. During the First World War, the United States encouraged its consumption to save meat for the troops.

A factory in Wisconsin. In 1841, Anne Pickett set up a cottage-industry cheese factory in Wisconsin that used milk from homestead cows.