Why is it called “Cottage” Cheese? Is it just a coincidence that it sounds like Ricotta Cheese, which it also resembles?
I’ve always assumed “Cottage” is a corruption of “Ricotta”, but I have no definitive info on that subject…
AFAIK, it is called that as you can make it in your “cottage” i.e. it doesn’t take much cheesemaking gear or a special room or anything.
50% WAG and 50% fact:
Fact: The entymology of ricotta from dictionary.com : Italian, from Latin recocta, feminine past participle of recoquere, to cook again.
WAG: Cottage cheese is made of fresh curds, and is unaged; it’s the sort of cheese one could make in one’s kitchen. Ever heard of a “cottage industry”? Maybe it’s the same basic deal. Similarly, “farmer’s cheese” is an unaged cheese that’s simple to make; i.e. it’s made by the farmer rather than by a cheese-maker.
I see at dictionary.com that in some places, cottage cheese is called farmer’s cheese, as well, which seems to agree with my hypotehesis. 'Round here, farmer’s cheese is pressed and drained, though.
Cottage cheese is fresh, unripened cheese that requires no aging, so I would assume DrDeth is correct.
I agree that ‘cottage’ is a generic adjective: there’s an Indian cottage cheese called Paneer, it’s quite different from the ricotta-y one. (And much more delicious!)
Ricotta is not cottage cheese. It is made partly from whey - the liquid left over from curdling milk. Solids are extracted from the whey and mixed with the cheese.
Most cheese is low in lactose because this sugar is mostly lost in the whey when the curds are separated out. Ricotta tends to be higher in lactose than most cheeses because the lactose is recovered (along with other solids from the whey) and mixed with the cheese. So, ricotta is not good for people who are lactose-intolerant.