A pasta filata cheese hiding a heart of fresh butter, known in Basilicata as manteca, from the Spanish for butter, or butirro, and recognised as a regional PAT and a Slow Food Ark of Taste product. It was born to keep butter through the year before refrigeration: butter churned from the whey and ricotta of caciocavallo podolico making is shaped into a ball, wrapped in a shell of hot stretched curd, brined and briefly aged, so that, sealed from the air, it kept and even improved. Tied to the podolico cow's short milking season, it is made from spring into summer, and belongs to the Pollino and Lagonegro highlands. Cut across, each round shows a pale rind and a soft golden core; the butter is spread, on its own, over hot toasted bread.
Manteca is a cheese of thrift, made to solve a plain problem: how to keep butter through a warm southern year before there was any way to chill it. In the making of caciocavallo podolico, the cheesemaker skims the fatty whey and the ricotta for cream and churns it to butter; that butter is then enclosed in a shell of the same stretched pasta filata curd, salted in brine and aged a short while, so that the airtight casein coat holds off rancidity and the butter within keeps and mellows. The cheese follows the podolico cow, a hardy grey breed that gives milk only from spring into high summer, so manteca is a seasonal product of the Pollino and Lagonegro mountains. Its presence in Lucania is documented from the early nineteenth century, when it was listed among the dairy products of the Circondario di Avigliano in the statistics of the Kingdom of Naples, and it survives today as a regional PAT and a Slow Food Ark of Taste product.
The outer shell is firm and mild, a young caciocavallo with a faint tang and a supple, layered chew from the stretched curd. Cut into it and the centre gives way to soft, sweet, uncooked butter, cool and creamy against the salted casing. Warmed on toast, that butter melts to pure cream and carries a gentle grassy note from the podolico milk.
The whole cheese is a piece of preservation engineering. Butter goes rancid when its fats meet oxygen and light; sealing it inside an airtight jacket of casein, the same stretched curd used for caciocavallo, starves that oxidation and buys months of keeping. The shell works because pasta filata curd, warmed in water to around 80°C, turns plastic: its casein proteins align into elastic sheets that can be moulded around the butter and welded shut with no seam for air to enter. Brining then salts and firms the rind, drawing out surface water and discouraging spoilage microbes, while the short aging lets the coat dry and the enclosed butter round out in flavour rather than turn.
Variations
The size and aging vary from dairy to dairy: some manteche are eaten within days as a fresh butter cheese, others held a few weeks until the shell firms and sharpens. The core is usually plain sweet butter, though a little salt is sometimes worked in. The same idea travels under other names down the Apennine south, burrino and butirro in Calabria and Campania, and the shell may be smoked, as caciocavallo often is, for a deeper rind. In Basilicata it stays tied to the podolico season and the highland dairies of the Pollino and Lagonegro.
On the Palate
Where Manteca sits in the Italian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
8 steps · 40 min
- 150 min
Warm the raw podolico milk to blood heat, stir in rennet, and leave until it sets to a firm curd.
- 225 min
Meanwhile skim the cream from the whey and the day's ricotta and churn it to fresh butter; work it into a small ball and chill until firm.
- 340 min
Cut and rest the curd under its warm whey until a piece dipped in hot water pulls into smooth, glossy strands.
Watch outThe curd's ready when a piece dipped in hot water pulls into smooth glossy strands — if it just tears, it hasn't acidified enough to stretch.
- 410 min
Lift a portion of the curd into water at about 80°C and stretch and fold it into a supple, elastic sheet.
- 58 min
Set the cold butter ball in the centre, draw the hot curd up around it and seal the seam completely so no air can reach the butter; pinch off the top and tie into the caciocavallo teardrop.
Watch outSeal the hot curd around the butter with no seam at all — the least gap lets air in and the butter core goes rancid in weeks.
- 690 min
Plunge the shaped manteca into cold water to set the shape, then into brine to salt and firm the rind.
- 721600 min
Hang in a cool, airy cellar to age briefly, until the shell has dried and firmed.
- 85 min
To serve, cut the round across so the section shows rind and butter core, and spread the soft butter over hot toasted bread.
