Hessischer Handkäse

Appearance & taste

Hessischer Handkäse consists of small loaves of 20 to 125 g. It belongs to the sour-milk cheeses, which are made mainly from sour-milk quark, and is produced only in the low-fat category (“Magerstufe”).

As a red smear cheese, also called Gelbkäse, it has a smooth, waxy, shiny surface with a golden-yellow to reddish-brown smear. Inside it is whitish to slightly yellowish, the paste supple to firm and evenly ripened from the outside in. It smells and tastes clean, savoury to sharp.

The Hausmacher also carries a white coating of milk mould, sometimes on one side only, and has a slightly yellowish, sometimes uneven to wrinkled skin. Inside it is white to yellowish with a matt cut surface, the paste supple. It smells and tastes clean, mild to slightly aromatic.

Production

The raw material is sour-milk quark from cow’s milk, made by acidification alone without rennet. It must be white, supple but firm to the touch and slightly grainy, smell and taste cleanly of lactic acid, and have at least 32 % dry matter and a pH below 4.2. Further ingredients are ripening salts, table salt, caraway depending on the recipe, possibly casein, and red smear cultures.

The cheese dairies select batches of quark from different quark producers, combine them into one batch and grind them; this produces an almost uniform starting product. The mixture is blended with the ingredients and cultures and shaped into small loaves. These ripen for two to three days in the sweating room, whose temperature rises from about 18 °C to around 30 °C; afterwards they continue to ripen until packing. Production and packing take place in Hesse because the small loaves would dry out unpacked during transport.

Origin & history

According to the specification, Handkäse has been made in the farming tradition for centuries. It is first mentioned in 1813, when people from Groß-Gerau sold their hand-shaped cheeses at the market in Mainz. As production grew, it became a staple food of “ordinary people”. In 1893 Peter Traiser II from Groß-Gerau invented a cheese machine with which production rose further. A centre of production was and is the Hüttenberger Land in today’s Lahn-Dill-Kreis; the local chronicle of Hochelheim reports from as early as 1835 that the cheese trade brings money into the village.

A food culture of its own has developed around Handkäse in Hesse. The best known is “Handkäs mit Musik”, in which the cheese is marinated in onions, vinegar and oil. According to the specification, it is regarded as the Hessian national dish. Today a few small and medium-sized artisanal cheese dairies make it.