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Cheese from Italy, Puglia, province of Foggia, Orsara di Puglia and some nearby communes

Cacioricotta caprino orsareseCas rcott

Cacioricotta caprino orsarese is a pear-shaped goat's-milk cheese of about 400 g from Orsara di Puglia. The milk is heated to about 90 °C, cooled to 40 °C and set with kid or calf rennet, so both whey proteins and casein end up in the curd. The curd is squeezed by hand in a cloth into a pear, hung to drip, brined and eaten fresh or dried for 50–60 days for grating.

Fully documentedCheese51 days – 2 monthsPuglia traditional food product (PAT)Family: Whey-cooked rennet curd family (halloumi type)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo fixed amounts. The regional sheet estimates output at about 1 quintal (100 kg) of cheese a day, and each cheese weighs about 400 g.
Whole goat milk, at most two milkingsGoat milk only[pat-sheet]
Kid or calf rennet[pat-sheet]
Salt, as brine[pat-sheet]
Starternone added to the milk (ONAF sheet lists no additions); kid or calf rennet

Total time across the recorded steps: 51 days – 2 months

Start
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90 °C

What changes: Goat's milk is heated to about 90 °C, so its whey proteins set

Step 1 of 6
Heat the milk close to boiling
Time
Not documented
Temperature
90 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Cacioricotta caprino orsarese is a pear-shaped goat's-milk cheese of about 400 g from Orsara di Puglia. The milk is heated to about 90 °C, cooled to 40 °C and set with kid or calf rennet, so both whey proteins and casein end up in the curd. The curd is squeezed by hand in a cloth into a pear, hung to drip, brined and eaten fresh or dried for 50–60 days for grating. Made in 6 steps over 51 days – 2 months. The longest step, eat fresh or dry, takes 50 days – 2 months (Regione Puglia). Lactic acid bacteria, dominant by culture in an Apulian cacioricotta of 50 % cow and ewe milk made with no starter at a dairy near Bari does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step50 days – 2 monthsReported[pat-sheet]Eat fresh or dry
Temperature90 °CReported[pat-sheet]Heat the milk close to boiling

What makes this one different

Unlike the Cilento cacioricotta, which is pressed into baskets, Orsara's is wrung by hand in a cloth into a small pear and hung to drip. It is brined, not dry-salted.

Rind
Fresh: none, white; aged: thin, porcelain to straw-yellow
Size
About 400 g; headless pear
Composition
40–50% fat in dry matter; 40–60% water (ONAF)
Season
Milk mainly from Easter to October

Related ferments

Variants

  • FrescoBrined a few minutes; eaten within 4–5 days; white, pasty, sweet.
  • StagionatoBrined 12 hours; dried 50–60 days; thin straw rind, chalky paste for grating.

Safety

The regional sheet considers the product fairly safe microbiologically because the milk reaches about 90–95 °C. That heat does not protect against later contamination. In a challenge test on goat cacioricotta, E. coli O157:H7 added after the milk had cooled to 37 °C grew about 10,000-fold in the first week and was still present after 90 days, so hygiene after the heating step is what matters.

Hazards the sources name: Escherichia coli O157:H7, added after the heat step, which grew and survived making and 90 days of ripening in a challenge test on goat cacioricotta.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Older shepherds attest that goats have long grazed the Orsara hills and that the method has been handed down. About 1,300 goats are kept in the commune, of about 4,000 in the 29 communes of the Monti Dauni.

  1. [pat-sheet] Regione Puglia, Area politiche per lo sviluppo rurale, Scheda identificativa per l'elenco dei Prodotti Tradizionali, Cacioricotta caprino orsarese (copy hosted by ONAF)gov
  2. [ioanna2018] Ioanna F., Quaglia N.C., Storelli M.M. et al. 2018, Survival of Escherichia coli O157:H7 during the manufacture and ripening of Cacioricotta goat cheese, Food Microbiology 70, 200–205 (abstract)paper
  3. [celano2022] Celano G., Costantino G., Calasso M. et al. 2022, Distinctive traits of four Apulian Traditional Agri-Food Product (TAP) cheeses manufactured at the same dairy plant, Foods 11, 425 (abstract)paper
  4. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Formaggi), Cacioricotta caprino orsarese cheese sheetweb