Acid- and acid/rennet-curd cheeses part B: Cottage cheese

Abstract

This chapter discusses cottage cheese that is soft, unripened, mild acid cheese with discrete curd particles of relatively uniform size. Creamed cottage cheese is dry-curd cottage cheese covered with a creamy dressing. Tuckey proposed that when the heating rate is too rapid, a surface protein film that acts as a semipermeable membrane, surrounding each cube of cottage cheese curd, becomes denatured, causing whey to be trapped in the curd. The quality of water used to wash curds affects the keeping quality of cottage cheese. Nutritionally, cottage cheese is a wholesome low-calorie food that supplies less than 110 kcal/100 g. The acidic taste of cottage cheese is largely because of lactic acid that is present at a concentration in the range 124–452 mg/kg; other acids present include formic and acetic, while the concentrations of propionic and butyric acids are <1 mg/kg.