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Cheese from Mexico, Chiapas

Queso crema de Chiapas

Raw cow milk is soured with acid whey from the previous day and set with a little calf rennet, and the curd rests for 24 hours. It drains for a day, is salted, kneaded, moulded and pressed for four hours, then wrapped in waxed paper. The sour, salty paste is eaten from a week old to more than three months.

Fully documentedCheese9.2 daysCollective mark (marca colectiva) Queso Crema de Chiapas; the certificate was granted in February 2013 (Lozano Moreno and Villegas de Gante 2016)Family: Fresh lactic (acid-set) cheese family

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceSmall artisanal dairies; the only dose the sources give is rennet per 10 L of milk.
Raw cow milk[rosado2013][ocampo2026]
Acid whey from the previous day's make[rosado2013]
Calf rennet1 mL per 10 L of milk[rosado2013]
Salt[rosado2013]
Starteracid whey from the previous day's make (backslopping)

Total time across the recorded steps: 9.2 days

Start
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What changes: Sour whey from yesterday is stirred into the raw milk

Step 1 of 7
Sour the milk with yesterday's whey
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Streptococcus
Lactobacillus
Lactococcus

The raw milk is acidified with acid whey kept from the day before; the milk also rests before setting.

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 is soured with acid whey from the previous day and set with a little calf rennet, and the curd rests for 24 hours. It drains for a day, is salted, kneaded, moulded and pressed for four hours, then wrapped in waxed paper. The sour, salty paste is eaten from a week old to more than three months. Made in 7 steps over 9.2 days. The longest step, ripen, takes at least 7 days (Ocampo Morales B.N. et al. 2026). Streptococcus, Lactobacillus and Lactococcus, the most abundant bacterial genera through 58 days of ripening, in that order of abundance does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepat least 7 daysReported[ocampo2026]Ripen
AciditypH 4Measured[rosado2013]Ripen

What makes this one different

A mixed acid-rennet curd, soured with the previous day's whey and rested for a day before draining, then salted, kneaded and pressed for four hours.

Milk
Raw cow milk
Ripening
From about one week to more than three months
Composition
Moisture 33.36–34.56% and fat 35.13–36.9% across 2–58 days in one study

Related ferments

Safety

The milk is raw. Mexican standard NOM-243-SSA1-2010 defines cheese as made from pasteurised milk. In the Ocampo Morales study the cheese had a water activity of 0.93 at 2, 29 and 58 days and no coliform growth at any stage; the authors credit organic acids, ethanol, lower pH and lower water activity, and advise against long storage.

Hazards the sources name: Aeromonas (sequencing at all three stages) and Enterobacter (sequencing at 2 days only) DNA, neither found by qPCR at any stage; Chryseobacterium found by qPCR at 29 days; no coliforms grew at any stage in that study.

History and sources

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

Chiapas makes about a million litres of milk a day, and around 70% goes into artisanal cheese. About 200 dairies, most of them small, make queso crema on the Costa alone. Lozano Moreno and Villegas de Gante say the tradition of making and eating the cheese goes back more than a century, that most of the state's small dairies make it, and that the certificate of its collective mark was granted in February 2013.

  1. [rosado2013] Rosado-Zarrabal T.L., Corzo-González H., Morales-Fernández S.D., Velázquez-Méndez A.M., Wong-Villarreal A. 2013, Caracterización fisicoquímica de quesos étnicos del estado de Chiapas, CienciaUAT 8(1):6-10paper
  2. [lozano2016] Lozano Moreno O., Villegas de Gante A. 2016, Valorización simbólica del Queso Crema de Chiapas, un queso mexicano tradicional con calidad de origen, PASOS Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural 14(2):459–473paper
  3. [ocampo2026] Ocampo Morales B.N. et al. 2026, Physicochemical and microbiome changes in queso Crema de Chiapas during ripening, PLoS Onepaper