Cottage cheese is a cheese curd product with a mild flavor. It is drained, but not pressed, so some whey remains and the individual curds remain loose. The curd is usually washed to remove acidity, giving sweet curd cheese. It is not aged or colored. Different styles of cottage cheese are made from milks with different fat levels and in small-curd or large-curd preparations. Cottage cheese which is pressed becomes hoop cheese, farmer cheese, pot cheese, or queso blanco.
Cottage cheese can be eaten by itself, with fruit and sugar, with salt and pepper, with fruit puree, on toast, with tomatoes, in salads, or used as an ingredient in recipes such as lasagna, jello salad and various desserts. Cottage cheese with fruit such as pears or peaches is a standard side dish in many "home cooking" or meat-and-three restaurants' menus.
The term "cottage cheese" is believed to have originated because the simple cheese was usually made in cottages from any milk left over after making butter. The term was first used in 1848. The curds and whey of nursery rhyme fame is another dish made from curds with whey, but it is uncertain what their consistency was, if they were drained at all or how they were curdled (which affects the flavor). Some writers claim they are equivalent or similar.
Famous quotes containing the words cottage and/or cheese:
“After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)