Recently I tried to find some info about vegetarian cheese.

To curd the milk, you need to treat it either with some acid (sour milk/lemon juice/vinegar) or the enzyme rennet. Animal rennet is extracted from the fourth calf’s stomach. To be exact, from the stomach of a by-product of cattle breeding, called the male calf ;-) (or rather :-(, I too happen to have XY chromosomes). Well, there’s also vegetarian rennet, used more often in cheapo cheeses. Kraft foods, is supposed to be using only the vegetable rennet for instance. So Kraft is in. Nice french cheese platter? For vegetarians? Out!

Now, it seemed simple at first - all the fresh cheese should be fairly vegetarian, right? Wrong! Mascarpone? Not quite… Mozarella? Wikipedia doesn’t say anything, but google suggests that rennet is used here, too. Ricotta? Well, it is made using whey from curding the rennet cheese. What’s better - rumors say that even cottage cheese is made using rennet. Why? Because nobody is willing to sit around waiting for the milk to get sour, if they can just curd it nicely within an hour or so. Of course, a) it’s a rumor b) they could use vegetable rennet. But as long as it’s not written explicitly, I guess I can forget about feeding it to any vegetarians too…

And now, that you know the whole story, let’s have a look at the byblical quote: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.”, Exodus 34:26. Why should I believe these cafeteria-bound academics and their strange stories about cooking goats in milk to please Moloch? By now it should be evident to every foodie - byblical Israelites shall not eat french cheese :-) Amen!