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Cheese from Italy, Lombardia

MagnocaMagnuca

Raw cow milk, mostly skimmed by letting the cream rise, is mixed with 10–25% whole milk and set with calf rennet at 30–34 °C. The curd is broken, semi-cooked at 40 °C, lifted out in cloths into hoops and salted dry or in brine. It ripens at least 60 days in humid cellars and can be kept almost a year.

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedMade in small craft workshops in barns and private dairies with no fixed batch size or doses; the sheets give only the milk mix, temperatures and times. A wheel weighs 7–12 kg.
Raw cow milk, skimmed by letting the cream rise75–90% of the milk in the ONAF sheet[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Whole raw cow milk10–25% of the milk[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Liquid calf rennet[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Salt, dry or as brine[onaf-sheet]

Total time across the recorded steps: 2 months

Start
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What changes: The cream rises and is skimmed off, then some whole milk goes back in

Step 1 of 7
Skim the milk by creaming
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Milk rests so the cream rises and is skimmed off; the ONAF sheet puts the skimmed share at 75–90% of the milk and adds back 10–25% whole milk.

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

Raw cow milk, mostly skimmed by letting the cream rise, is mixed with 10–25% whole milk and set with calf rennet at 30–34 °C. The curd is broken, semi-cooked at 40 °C, lifted out in cloths into hoops and salted dry or in brine. It ripens at least 60 days in humid cellars and can be kept almost a year. Made in 7 steps over 2 months. The longest step, ripen in the cellar, takes at least 2 months (ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters)).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 2 monthsReported[onaf-sheet]Ripen in the cellar
Temperature30–34 °CReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Set with calf rennet

What makes this one different

The semi-fat version of Magro di latteria. Most of the milk is skimmed by creaming but 10–25% whole milk goes back in, and the curd is only semi-cooked at 40 °C. It is made in small craft workshops and is hard to standardise.

Rind
Thin, 'flowered', straw-yellow with white, yellow or reddish tints
Size
Cylinder 35–40 cm across and 8–10 cm high, 7–12 kg
Season
Made all year

Related ferments

Safety

Made from raw milk and ripened at least 60 days. That does not guarantee safety. In tests that added the bacteria on purpose, E. coli O157:H7 and Listeria survived well beyond 60 days in Cheddar. ANSES, the French food-safety agency, names Listeria, Salmonella and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli among the bacteria found in raw-milk cheeses. It advises pregnant women, people over 65, young children and people with weak immunity not to eat raw-milk cheese, except cooked pressed cheeses such as Gruyère; Magnoca is only semi-cooked.

History and sources

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

In the local dialect 'magnoca' means a fresh cheese. It fed rural families and was sold in village shops; it is still sold mostly by the maker, in places such as Campodolcino, Gordona, Novate Mezzola and Chiavenna along the road to the Splügen pass.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [pat-sheet] Regione Lombardia, traditional product sheet 'Magnoca' (copy hosted by ONAF)gov
  2. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters), technical sheet 'Magnoca'web
  3. [onaf] ONAF, cheese page 'Magnoca' (id 1015)web
  4. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov
  5. [damico2008] D'Amico D.J. 2008, Incidence, ecology, and fate of target foodborne pathogens in the cheesemaking continuum, PhD dissertation, University of Vermontpaper