Talk:Ricotta cheese

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[edit] Is ricotta a cheese or not?

From cheese: Cheese is a solid food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other mammals. Cheese is made by curdling milk using a combination of rennet (or rennet substitutes) and acidification. Bacteria acidify the milk and play a role in defining the texture and flavor of most cheeses. Some cheeses also feature molds, either on the outer rind or throughout.

Since ricotta is NOT made by the milk itself, but by curdling the whey, technically it shouldn't be a true cheese. The Italian wikipedia in fact classifies it correctly as a dairy product. --Cyclopia 11:04, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

In my personal opinion, you're splitting hairs. As any 10 people on the street what ricotta is, I guarantee all 10 will say cheese. --[[User:Kid_Orgo|Kid_Orgo}} 12:17, December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but they could all be wrong. :) As any 10 people on the street you ask what Pluto is, they'll answer "a planet", but it is no more classified as such. We are building an encyclopaedia, that is a repository of hopefully correct information, not of "what people of the street think" information. So, splitting hairs is just our work. Since the word cheese has a given definition, and the status of ricotta does not fit in the given definition, I guess it is not a cheese (unless we change the definition of cheese). Of course I'm all for specifying this is a purely technical question: something like "Ricotta is not technically a cheese, because... but, for all practical matters, it is treated and classified as such". --Cyclopia 13:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Cyclopia. From "The Food Lover's Companion" by Sharon Tyler Herbst: "Technically, this type of ricotta is not really a cheese because it's made from a cheese by-product." She draws a distinction between Italian ricotta, which is made from whey, and American-made ricotta, which is usually made from a combination of whey and milk. User:24.6.7.233

The technicality here is insiginificant IMO. Whey is a milk product. The process is (in very general): milk -> whey -> ricotta. The fact that there is a "whey" step in this process does not make it a non-dairy product! Other types of modern cheese may also undergo elaborate processes to reach the final product, but they are still considered cheeses as they are made of milk. Whey protein comes from milk, it doesn't simply appear in the substance. When analyzing the ingredients of this product, the bottom line is that it is made almost entirely of milk (since whey is milk stripped of casein and most fats). This makes it fully compliant with the definition of cheese -- "'a solid food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other mammals'". --Sagie 10:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)