Sour milk cheese

Sour milk cheese or acid-set cheese is a cheese that has been curdled (coagulated) by natural souring or by the addition of lactic acid bacteria, such as traditional curd cheese or cottage cheese. Sour milk cheese does not use rennet for coagulation.

Sour milk cheese generally ripens for no more than two weeks in comparative warmth. 100 litres of milk yield about 8 to 9 kilograms of sour milk cheese, which contains less than 10% fat and up to 37% protein. Most sour milk cheeses are white mould cheeses or red mould cheeses, and many are flavoured with caraway.

In Germany the term Sauermilchkäse is usually applied to ripened acid-set cheeses only, but not to fresh cheeses. The various types of ripened sour milk cheese include:

References

Soured milk

Soured milk is a food product produced from the acidification of milk. It is not the same as spoiled milk that has gone bad naturally, commonly also called "soured". Acidification, which gives the milk a tart taste, is achieved either through the addition of an acid, such as lemon juice or vinegar, or through bacterial fermentation. The acid causes milk to coagulate and form a thicker consistency, and inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria and thus improves its shelf life. Soured milk that is produced by bacterial fermentation is more specifically called fermented milk or cultured milk. Soured milk that is produced by the addition of an acid, with or without the addition of microbial organisms, is more specifically called acidified milk. In the United States, acids used to manufacture acidified milk include acetic acid (commonly found in vinegar), adipic acid, citric acid (commonly found in lemon juice), fumaric acid, glucono-delta-lactone, hydrochloric acid, lactic acid, malic acid, phosphoric acid, succinic acid, and tartaric acid.

Milk & Cheese

Milk & Cheese is a comic book created by Evan Dorkin and published by Slave Labor Graphics. It follows an anthropomorphic, misanthropic carton of milk and a wedge of cheese. The eponymous "dairy products gone bad" tend to drink copious quantities of gin and become embroiled in gratuitously violent situations.

Cheese began as an in-joke involving two friends of Dorkin who were sometimes called the "cheesy" Garcia sisters. He continued drawing little cheeses that would eventually become "Cheese" on cocktail napkins at clubs during the mid to late 1980s. One night, at a restaurant, Dorkin scribbled a little Milk character next to the cheese drawing, with the pair hitchhiking and holding beers in their hands. Dorkin continued to sketch the two characters at conventions until Kurt Sayenga of the now defunct Greed Magazine saw them at a San Diego comic book convention and offered Evan a spot for a Milk & Cheese strip in the magazine. The strip ran in the final issue of Greed, published in 1988. Several more strips were printed in various comic books and magazines before Slave Labor Graphics collected them and published Milk & Cheese number one. Since that time the company has published six more comic books featuring the characters. Several issues of the title were numbered as number one issues, making fun of the practice of buying comic books as an investment instead of as entertainment. In 2011, Dark Horse Comics released a hardcover collection containing nearly every strip featuring the characters from 1989 to 2010.