Slovenská parenica

Appearance & taste

Slovenská parenica consists of two rolls joined into an “S”; each is 6 to 8 cm in diameter and 5 to 8 cm high. They are wound from a single strip of cheese that, before rolling, is 2 to 3 mm thick, 5 to 8 cm wide and 4 to 6 m long. A thread of cheese or a small chain holds the rolls together.

After smoking, the surface is yellow to brown and the inside white to butter-yellow. Typical is the pronounced fibrous structure: the cheese is elastic and forms threads when pulled apart. It smells of sheep’s milk and of the smoke of broadleaved wood and has a fine, pleasantly salty sheep’s cheese taste. It contains at least 53 % dry matter, at least 50 % fat in dry matter and at most 3 % salt.

The cheese is sold in packs of 450 to 500 g, in clear film or cellophane between two ovals of thick wood veneer. The label highlights the name “Slovenská parenica”.

Production

The sheep’s milk comes from grazing sheep of the Valaška, Zošľachtená valaška, Cigája and Východofrízska breeds. In March and April they graze in the lower parts of the area, from May and in summer on higher pastures. Freshly milked raw sheep’s milk is used, or a mixture with raw cow’s milk that is at least half sheep’s milk. It coagulates at 29 to 32 °C about half an hour after the rennet is added. The curd is stirred with the curd harp, cut to 0.5 to 1 cm, formed by hand into lumps of 3 to 5 kg, lifted out of the whey in a cheesecloth and drained. The lumps then sour for about 24 hours at 20 to 23 °C.

The soured cheese is cut into pieces of about 0.5 kg and worked into a smooth mass with a small wooden paddle in a wooden tub of water at 60 to 70 °C. It is taken out by hand, pressed out and repeatedly pulled apart and folded together. A strip is then drawn out and spread to a length of 4 to 6 m with the edge of the hand on a wooden board. It goes into cold, saturated brine, is wiped, folded in the middle, rolled from both ends towards each other into a full “S” and tied. After drying, the cheese is smoked over broadleaved wood for two hours. It is made on farms and in mountain huts or in plants and dairies in the area.

Origin & history

The area is the mountain region of Slovakia above 200 m, bounded among others by the White Carpathians in the west, the Tatras and the Polish border in the north and the border with Ukraine in the east. Because it covers more than 80 % of the country’s area, the cheese bears the name of the country. According to the specification, the same sheep breeds graze everywhere on pastures with the same flora and the same climate.

Parenica was first made by sheep-farming families for their own use, in their kitchens and later also in the mountain huts. According to historical sources, it originated around Zvolen and Brezno and spread over almost all of Slovakia; in the 19th century it was also sold on the market in Vienna and other cities. After the Second World War it was made only in the mountain area. The first written records date from the 19th century. In his 1908 book on cheesemaking, the dairy scientist Otakar Laxa called parenica a unique, typically Slovak cheese and the “king of cheeses”. The Codex Alimentarius Austriacus of 1917 describes it as a steamed, stretched cheese that is wound up and smoked and comes from Upper Hungary, Slovakia. Agreements of Czechoslovakia with Austria (1981) and Portugal (1987) already protected the name.