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Cheese from Italy, Veneto

Formaggio Morlaccomorlak

Morlacco is a lean, salty fresh cheese made from June to September on the pastures of Monte Grappa. Raw evening milk, skimmed by letting the cream rise overnight, is mixed 1:1 with whole morning milk and set with calf rennet at 35–40 °C. The uncooked curd is drained in ridged moulds, dry-salted for 2–4 days and eaten after 6–15 days.

Fully documentedCheese8 days – 19 daysPAT (Regione Veneto); the raw-milk malga cheese is a Slow Food PresidioFamily: Uncooked or semi-cooked pressed cheese family (tomme, Saint-Nectaire, Reblochon, Morbier, Raclette)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe regional sheet gives the method but no amounts other than the 1:1 ratio of skimmed to whole milk. A cheese weighs 5–10 kg.
Raw cow milk, half skimmed evening milk and half whole morning milkRatio of skimmed to whole milk 1 to 1[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Liquid calf rennet[onaf-sheet]
Dry salt[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]

Total time across the recorded steps: 8 days – 19 days

Start
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What changes: The evening milk stands overnight in basins and the cream rises off it

Step 1 of 6
Skim the evening milk overnight
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
S. macedonicus
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: skimmed evening milk, mixed 1:1 with whole morning milk in a copper vat.

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

Morlacco is a lean, salty fresh cheese made from June to September on the pastures of Monte Grappa. Raw evening milk, skimmed by letting the cream rise overnight, is mixed 1:1 with whole morning milk and set with calf rennet at 35–40 °C. The uncooked curd is drained in ridged moulds, dry-salted for 2–4 days and eaten after 6–15 days. Made in 6 steps over 8 days – 19 days. The longest step, ripen briefly, takes 6–15 days (Regione del Veneto). Streptococcus macedonicus does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step6–15 daysReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Ripen briefly
Temperature35–40 °CReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Warm the milk and set it with calf rennet

What makes this one different

Morlacco is a lean, uncooked, dry-salted cheese sold 6–15 days after making. Today half its milk is skimmed (1:1 with whole milk). The original cheese was made from fully skimmed milk and called formajo dei puareti, the poor men's cheese, because the cream went to butter, the herders' main income.

Rind
Barely there and ridged from the moulds, white to straw yellow; not edible
Size
Ø 30–50 cm, height 7–12 cm, 5–10 kg
Season
June to September, on the Grappa pastures

Related ferments

Variants

  • Kept in clay or sandWrapped in at least 3 cm of Possagno clay or buried in damp washed river sand, it keeps 4–5 months or more; a home practice, not sold.

Safety

The milk is used raw and the cheese is eaten after only 6–15 days. Raw-milk cheese can carry Listeria, Salmonella and Shiga-toxin E. coli, and Listeria and that E. coli can kill. ANSES, the French food-safety agency, advises pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity not to eat it, except cooked pressed kinds such as Gruyère, which this soft cheese is not. Cutting off the rind does not remove the risk. A 14-year survey of raw-milk alpine dairies in Friuli, not of this cheese, found Shiga-toxin E. coli in 10 of 132 curds and Listeria in 2 of 157 cheeses. Its authors call detection generally low.

History and sources

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

A mid-19th-century economic report on the districts of Asolo, Castelfranco, Montebelluna and Treviso describes a whitish, lean, salty summer cheese called Morlacco. The name is said to come from the Morlachs, herders who settled on the Grappa in the time of the Venetian Republic. The milk once came from the local Burlina cow.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [pat-sheet] Regione del Veneto, Atlante dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali del Veneto, Formaggi, 'Formaggio Morlacco', p. 158 (copy hosted by ONAF)gov
  2. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Formaggi), technical sheet 'Formaggio Morlacco'web
  3. [onaf] ONAF, cheese page 'Formaggio Morlacco' (id 1078)web
  4. [vendramin2014] Vendramin V, Treu L, Bovo B, Campanaro S, Corich V, Giacomini A. 2014, Whole-genome sequence of Streptococcus macedonicus strain 33MO, isolated from curd of Morlacco cheese in the Veneto region (Italy), Genome Announcements 2(4):e00746-14paper
  5. [prandi2026] Prandi I, Pezzuto A, Massaro A, et al. 2026, A Fourteen-Year Surveillance Study on the Microbiological Status of Raw Milk Dairy Products from Alpine Dairies in Northeastern Italy, Foods 15(9):1479 (abstract)paper
  6. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov