Homemade Cottage Cheese

If you’ve ever tasted and longed for the fresh curds of Wisconsin cheese-makers, those “squeakies” that Ferdi Nachreiner longed for in Tokyo and Brazil, you can simulate that taste in your own kitchen by making clabber or pot cheese, the kind of cheese we now call “cottage” but should call “factory.” A description from The Buckeye Cookbook (1883) reveals that such cheeses were once as much a part of daily life as making bread or brewing beer: