Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cheese from Italy, Campania

Scamorzini del MateseScamurzini ré Matese

Raw whole cow milk from the evening and morning milkings is set at 38 °C with calf rennet and a farm whey starter. The curd sours 2–4 hours in a cherry-wood tub under boiling whey, then is stretched with boiling water into a rope and cut into small ovoids of 100–150 g, some with a head at each end. They are brined, tied in bunches of up to 100 and hung to dry and ripen.

Fully documentedCheese10 days – 2 monthsTraditional food product (PAT, Campania)Family: Pasta filata (stretched-curd) cheese family

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe sheets give no amounts or batch size. Each cheese weighs 100–150 g.
Raw whole cow milk from the evening and morning milkings[pat-sheet]
Farm whey starter (siero innesto), made in the same dairy[pat-sheet]
Liquid calf rennet[pat-sheet]
Salt, as brine[pat-sheet]
Starterfarm whey starter; whey from each make is kept for the next

Total time across the recorded steps: 10 days – 2 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
38 °C

What changes: Whey starter and calf rennet go into the milk at 38 °C

Step 1 of 7
Add starter and rennet
Time
35 min
Reported
Temperature
38 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: curd.

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 whole cow milk from the evening and morning milkings is set at 38 °C with calf rennet and a farm whey starter. The curd sours 2–4 hours in a cherry-wood tub under boiling whey, then is stretched with boiling water into a rope and cut into small ovoids of 100–150 g, some with a head at each end. They are brined, tied in bunches of up to 100 and hung to dry and ripen. Made in 7 steps over 10 days – 2 months. The longest step, hang to dry and ripen, takes 10 days – 2 months (ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters)) and runs at 8–15 °C (Regione Campania 2015).

Key numbers
Main step10 days – 2 monthsReported[onaf-sheet]Hang to dry and ripen
Temperature8–15 °CReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Hang to dry and ripen

What makes this one different

Made by the same process as caciocavallo del Matese but shaped into much smaller forms of 100–150 g, sometimes with a head at each end, and eaten young. The curd sours in a cherry-wood tub under boiling whey.

Rind
Fresh: very thin white skin; semi-aged: thin, smooth, glossy straw rind
Size
Ovoid with one or two heads, 100–150 g
Season
Made all year

Related ferments

Variants

  • FrescoWhite, sweet, ripened a few weeks
  • SemistagionatoStraw-yellow, firmer and slightly sharp, up to about 2 months

Safety

ONAF lists the milk as raw. The curd is stretched in boiling water, and the cheeses dry in rooms kept at 8–15 °C and 60–80% humidity. The sheets record no hygiene exemption and do not show that these steps remove pathogens. ANSES advises pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity not to eat raw-milk cheeses other than pressed cooked ones such as Gruyère or Comté, because of Listeria, Salmonella and Shiga-toxin E. coli.

History and sources

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

The regional sheet says it developed in the 1960s, when the market asked for a cheese to buy and eat at once, especially in summer. For over 30 years from the 1960s San Gregorio Matese was a well-known tourist resort, and visitors, mostly from Naples and Rome, took its local cheeses home.

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov
  2. [pat-sheet] Regione Campania, Assessorato agricoltura, Prodotti tradizionali, page 'Scamorzini del Matese' (updated 13 March 2015; printout of agricoltura.regione.campania.it)gov
  3. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters), technical sheet 'Scamorzini del Matese'web
  4. [onaf] ONAF, cheese page 'Scamorzini del Matese' (id 1172)web