Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cheese from Italy, Basilicata

CasieddoCasieddu

Goat milk is heated over a wood fire to 85–90 °C with the aromatic herb nepitella, so the whey proteins set, then cooled to 35–38 °C and set with farm kid or lamb rennet paste. The curd is broken to rice size, worked by hand into small balls and wrapped in fresh ferns tied with broom. It is a variant of cacioricotta, eaten fresh or after a few weeks.

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe sheets give no amounts. Each cheese weighs 0.4–0.5 kg and is about 10 cm across (8–9 cm in the ONAF sheet).
Raw whole goat milkFrom goats of mixed breeds on open pasture[pat-casieddo][onaf-casieddo]
Nepitella leaves (Calamintha nepeta)Put into the milk while it heats[pat-casieddo][onaf-casieddo]
Kid or lamb rennet pasteMade on the farm[pat-casieddo][onaf-casieddo]
SaltA light salting, mainly for cheeses kept a few weeks[pat-casieddo][onaf-casieddo]
Fresh ferns and broom stemsThe ferns are woven round the cheese and tied with broom[pat-casieddo]

Total time across the recorded steps: 7 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
85–90 °C

What changes: The milk is heated to 85–90 °C over a wood fire with nepitella

Step 1 of 6
Heat the milk with nepitella
Time
Not documented
Temperature
85–90 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

The herb goes in while the milk heats. Near boiling, the whey proteins start to set, as in cacioricotta.

Flavour
herbal, from the nepitella
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

Goat milk is heated over a wood fire to 85–90 °C with the aromatic herb nepitella, so the whey proteins set, then cooled to 35–38 °C and set with farm kid or lamb rennet paste. The curd is broken to rice size, worked by hand into small balls and wrapped in fresh ferns tied with broom. It is a variant of cacioricotta, eaten fresh or after a few weeks. Made in 6 steps over 7 days. The longest step, salt and dry briefly, for keeping, takes 7 days (ONAF (Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori F…).

Key numbers
Main step7 daysReported[onaf-casieddo]Salt and dry briefly, for keeping
Temperature85–90 °CReported[pat-casieddo][onaf-casieddo]Heat the milk with nepitella

What makes this one different

It is made like a cacioricotta, with the milk heated nearly to boiling, but nepitella is steeped in the milk and each cheese is hand-shaped and sold wrapped in fresh ferns. It is made only from June to September.

Rind
None or barely visible; aged: hard, grey-yellow
Size
0.4–0.5 kg; Ø 8–9 cm

Related ferments

Variants

  • FrescoUnsalted or barely salted, fern-wrapped and sold at once.
  • StagionatoSalted, dried about a week and kept a few weeks; hard grey-yellow rind.

Safety

The milk is heated to 85–90 °C before the rennet goes in, then handled by hand. The regional sheet calls it a product for eating fresh. That heat does not protect curd contaminated afterwards. In a lab challenge test on a related goat cacioricotta, a non-toxigenic E. coli O157:H7 strain added after heating grew in the curd and was still present after 90 days.

Hazards the sources name: Escherichia coli O157:H7 (a non-toxigenic test strain), added after the milk was heated and cooled to 37 °C, grew in the curd and was still present after 90 days of ripening in lab-made goat cacioricotta, a related cheese.

History and sources

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

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [pat-casieddo] Regione Basilicata (ALSIA), Prodotti tradizionali della Basilicata (D.M. 350/99), sheet 'Casieddo anche Casieddu' (copy hosted by ONAF)gov
  2. [onaf-casieddo] ONAF (Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Formaggi), technical sheet 'Casieddo - Casieddu', PAT Regione Basilicataweb
  3. [onaf] ONAF, scheda formaggio 'Casieddo - Casieddu' (id 339)web
  4. [ioanna2018] Ioanna F, Quaglia NC, Storelli MM, Castiglia D, Goffredo E, Storelli A, De Rosa M, Normanno G, Jambrenghi AC, Dambrosio A. 2018, Survival of Escherichia coli O157:H7 during the manufacture and ripening of Cacioricotta goat cheese, Food Microbiology 70:200-205 (a challenge study on a related goat cheese, not this cheese)paper
  5. [celano2022] Celano G, Costantino G, Calasso M, Randazzo C, Minervini F. 2022, Distinctive Traits of Four Apulian Traditional Agri-Food Product (TAP) Cheeses Manufactured at the Same Dairy Plant, Foods 11(3):425 (includes an Apulian cacioricotta of cow and ewe milk; a related cheese, not this cheese)paper