Prescinseua is a fresh cheese, sort of halfway between ricotta and Greek yoghurt. It is both a clabbered cheese, and a cheese that uses rennet.
It has a neutral taste with a slight tang, and provides more body than flavour to a dish. It is used as for stuffed pastas, as an ingredient in savoury pies, and stirred into sauces (particularly pesto). It is more an ingredient rather than a cheese to be eaten on its own. That being said, it can also be spread on bread as part of an open-faced sandwich, or served with sugar, honey, cinnamon, chestnuts, or fruit preserves for breakfast.
Commercially, it is made from pasteurized cow’s milk.
The cheese is made in Liguria, Italy, particularly in Valle Stura a Masone and Golfo del Tigullio. It doesn’t have a long life span, so it can’t really be shipped far from where it is made. In Liguria, it is sold in supermarkets in small tubs.
No salt is added.
Cooking Tips
Here is a sample recipe for making it at home that requires raw milk:
[Note: we pass on this example for sake of illustration, but as the procedure uses raw milk, this is not a recommendation from us.]
Take litres of whole raw milk from cows. Let the milk sit in a platter for 48 hours (at this point, the milk will be “clabbered”.) Take ¼ litre of that, heat it to between 40 and 50 C, and stir in 5 g of rennet, then mix back into the other milk, and let sit 4 hours. The milk should be coagulated at that point.
There are other recipes for homemade versions. Ratios of heated milk used vary by recipe from 25% to 50%. Some versions add cream. The speed of the process may vary by room temperature (and by extension, then, by season.)
Substitutes
Italians tend to use stracchino cheese as a substitute.
You can try ½ ricotta, ½ yoghurt (preferably Greek yoghurt)
Language Notes
“Prescinseua” is thought to have come from the word for rennet in Genoese, presû.
Also called “prescinseha”, “cagliata”, and “quagliata”.