Cultured Dairy Traditions: The Specialties That Bond

By Terese Allen, Organic Valley food editor

My Wisconsin-born father was “one hundred percent Belgian,” as he liked to say, and a man who reminisced frequently about the ethnic specialties of his childhood. Some were dishes that had been passed down to my generation, so I was familiar with them—the pork sausage we called “trippe,” a cabbage dish called “jutt” and the fruit-and-cheese pastry known simply as Belgian pie. But one of Dad’s food memories was a mystery to me, a fresh cheese he called “stoffie.” I’ve since learned that stoffie was made from milk left to stand overnight in a warm part of the kitchen. The milk would have been organic and locally sourced, and it came from grass-fed cows raised in open-air pastures, as was virtually all milk during my father’s early 20^th-century youth. Once soured, the milk transformed into a calcium-dense and delectable spread: yogurt, which Belgian-Americans smeared on bread, or sometimes sprinkled with sugar or salt and pepper. When stoffie was heated further and released its whey, the mass was then squeezed, seasoned, blended with butter and shaped into large balls. My father fondly remembered how this simple white cheese, named “cassette,” would make him salivate as it hung in cloths from hooks in the pantry.

Since I myself grew up eating store-bought cheese (and commercial yogurt hadn’t yet entered the American culinary consciousness), stoffie and cassette seemed alien to me. Still, while I couldn’t smell or taste them, one thing about them was immediately recognizable —the sense of identity they imparted to my father. By recalling the shape and flavor of stoffie, my father reconnected with his Belgian ancestry. Likewise when I taste real-deal organic yogurt today, I, too, can savor a little of my heritage.

It is same for people of dairy-consuming nationalities all around the world. Authentically made fermented products like yogurt, fresh cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese —and many beloved ethnic dishes made from them—are cultural expressions of cultured dairy foods. And they have been bonding generations ever since humans first learned that sour milk could provide a multitude of delicious, healthful ways to keep food longer.

“In every society that historically consumed dairy foods, cultured yogurt and other probiotic dairy foods earned a much-loved and much-respected place in the indigenous diets,” writes Jennifer McGruther, author of the website-blog called “Nourished Kitchen.” Indeed, organically and pasture-produced for millennia, cultured dairy products have long lent their probiotic benefits and superior nutrient profile to the human diet. They’ve also been the source of pleasure and comfort whenever families follow the time-honored recipes and rituals of their predecessors.