Cottage cheese

• 1. Cottage Cheese

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  Cottage cheese got its name in the United States, where it was made in farm cottages from the milk left over after butter making. The name sounds humble, and the food is plain on purpose. It is a fresh cheese with a mild flavor and a creamy, lumpy texture, and it is never aged. Yet this modest dairy product has a long past. Where does the oldest evidence of cheesemaking come from? How do a splash of acid and a vat of bacteria turn milk into curds? And why did a food that once crowded American refrigerators lose so much ground to the yogurt aisle? The answers begin on a wall in Mesopotamia.

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• 2. Ancient Curds

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  A frieze at the Temple of the Great Goddess of Life, Ninhursag, in Mesopotamia holds the first pictorial evidence of cheesemaking. The temple sits in the Fertile Crescent, a region that covers modern-day Iraq, and the carving is about 5,000 years old. It shows priests at work on cow dairy. They may be making a curd mixture somewhat like cottage cheese. Literature offers a more playful origin story. In Homer's Odyssey, the Cyclops Polyphemus makes cheese by storing milk in animal stomachs. The detail is fiction, but it points at real chemistry, because rennin, an enzyme from animal stomachs, makes milk coagulate and splits the curds from the whey. As Rome expanded its empire, it spread this knowledge and met many new forms of cheese along the way. The Romans also introduced cheesemaking to England. Nobody yet called any of it cottage cheese, and the method behind it was about to be put in a modern vat.

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• 3. Acid and Whey

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  Vinegar or lemon juice is enough to start the process. Stirred into milk, the acid makes the milk proteins, called curds, pull away from the liquid, called whey. The curds are drained and mixed with cream and salt. That mixture is called a dressing, and it is mainly responsible for the taste of the finished food. Factories have followed a longer route since the 1930s. They start with pasteurized skim milk, or in newer processes concentrated nonfat milk or reconstituted nonfat dry milk. A bacterial culture that makes lactic acid goes in, usually a strain of Lactococcus lactis, along with rennet. The vat is heated to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and held there for 8 hours or more. A gelatinous skin of curd forms over the whey, and wires cut it into cubes so more whey can drain away. The curds are reheated to 120 degrees Fahrenheit for one or two hours, drained, pressed, and rinsed in water. Only then do salt and cream dressing go in before packaging. Some smaller luxury creameries skip the first heating, let bacteria work much longer, or dress the curds with crème fraîche. In the United States, a version made with food-grade acid must be labeled as direct acid set. It must contain at least 4% milkfat and no more than 80% moisture.

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• 4. Flavor Chemistry

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  Roughly 2 parts per million of diacetyl is the target for a typical cottage cheese flavor. Diacetyl gives a buttery, creamy note, and producers get it by adding a small amount of citrate-fermenting lactococci or leuconostoc strains to the starter mix. Balance matters. The ratio of diacetyl to acetaldehyde should sit between 3 and 5 to 1. If the ratio runs too low, the cheese tastes grassy. If it runs too high, the taste turns harsh. The tang comes from lactic acid, present at 124-452 mg/kg, while formic, acetic, propionic and butyric acids shape the aroma. Color is sometimes adjusted too. Titanium dioxide is added to some brands, including Borden and Lucerne, to make the cheese a brighter white. The FDA allows it in many dairy products, though not whole milk, up to 1% of total volume by weight. Canada and the European Union may allow it as well. The FDA does not restrict nanoparticle technology in food, but in Europe it must first be submitted for approval as a food ingredient. The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies reports that titanium dioxide appears in hundreds of products, including many organic ones, and is not always labeled. Several large American producers have denied using it. Shoppers face one last choice at the shelf, which is the size of the curd.

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• 5. Factories and Posters

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  In 1868 the first American cheese factory opened, and the wholesale cheese industry in the United States began. Immigrants had already carried fresh-cheese traditions across the ocean. Industrial cheese use grew greatly toward the end of the 19th century, and by the turn of the 20th century farm cheese production had become significant. Then came the First World War. Cottage cheese was promoted widely, along with other dairy products, so that meat could be saved for infantry rations. War posters carried the message, and one claimed that a pound of cottage cheese holds more protein than a pound of lamb, pork, beef, or chicken. When the fighting ended, the habit stayed, and cottage cheese quickly became more common on American tables.

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• 6. Boom and Slump

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  Production reached 30,000,000 pounds in 1919, a small slice of the 418,000,000 pounds of cheese of all kinds made in 1920. By 1928 the figure for cottage cheese had climbed to 87,000,000 pounds. The peak came in the 1970s, when dieting became common. Americans bought about $1.3 billion of it each year. Then the tide turned. In the 1980s yogurt consumption rose, and cottage cheese sales dropped considerably, falling further in the 2000s. A Wall Street Journal article in 2016 speculated that the cheese might be ready for a resurgence. Greek yogurt had popularized foods with high protein and low sugar, and cottage cheese offers both. Behind that hope lies a nutrition profile worth a closer look.

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• 7. Nutrition

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  A 100 gram serving of full fat cottage cheese supplies 103 calories. By weight it is 78% water, 12% protein, 5% carbohydrates, and 4% fat. It is a rich source of vitamin B12, at 28% of the Daily Value, and a moderate source of phosphorus and sodium, at 12-15%. Versions come in low-fat and fat-free forms, and even the full fat original has fewer calories than a chunk of hard cheese or a wedge of soft cheese. Dietitians name it a top choice for overall health because of its high protein and low fat. It is also safe to eat during pregnancy, unlike some cheese products. Beyond its nutrients, though, there is little evidence of any direct health effect. Lactose is a separate matter. Because of the whey it contains, cottage cheese is high in lactose compared with most other cheeses, although lactic acid fermentation partly breaks the lactose down.

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• 8. On the Plate

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  Pineapple, pears, peaches, and mandarin oranges are the classic fruit partners in the United States and Canada. Cottage cheese can also be combined with fruit and sugar, with salt and pepper, with fruit purée or tomatoes, or with granola and cinnamon. It goes on toast and into salads, and it works as a chip dip. Cooks use it as an ingredient in jello salad and in various desserts. One swap stands out. In tuna salad, cottage cheese can replace mayonnaise, which shows how readily such a mild cheese takes the place of a richer ingredient.

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