Kashkaval
Kashkaval is a yellow cheese from the Balkans made with cow, sheep or goat milk, or a mixture of them. It melts and fries well, so it shows up on pizza, inside breakfast pastries and as a filling in Levantine baking.
Key Facts
| Country of Origin | Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Turkey |
| Specific Origin | The Balkans, Turkey and the Levant |
| Milk Type | Cow's or sheep's milk |
| Milk Treatment | Varied |
| Fat Content | Minimum 45% in dry matter |
| Rind | Varied |
| Texture | Medium-hard to hard, elastic |
| Flavor | Piquant |
| Aroma | Varied |
| Colors | Yellow |
| Forms | 13–20 pounds (6–9 kg) cheeses |
| Age | Minimum of two months |
| Rennet Type | Varied |
| Alternative Spellings | kaçkavall, kačkavalj, cașcaval, kaşkaval, kaskavál, qashqawān |
| Also Known As | kasseri, cascaval, kashkawan, Ksara, Kashkaval vitosha, Kaval, Kashkaval balkan, Kashkaval preslav |
What is Kashkaval Cheese?
Kashkaval is a cheese of the Balkans, Turkey and the Levant, made from cow, sheep or goat milk or a mixture of them. The name may come from the Italian caciocavallo. A second theory ties it to the Romanian caș, meaning cheese, though the kaval part stays unexplained.
It has a long paper trail. Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatnâme records that 400 artisans in 17th century Istanbul made cheeses including kaşkaval, and that the cheese was produced in Çatalca. Ottoman feasts served it as penir-i kaskaval. In Serbia, kačkavalj arrived in Pirot in the 1810s with Dalmatian or Italian cheesemakers who had settled in the Ottoman Empire, and from there it spread across the Balkans as far as Salonica and Istanbul.
Recipes shift from country to country. Bulgaria makes kashkaval vitosha from cow's milk, kashkaval balkan from ewe's milk and kashkaval preslav from a blend of the two. In Romania and Moldova, cașcaval covers a group of yellow medium and semi hard cheeses: dobrogea is sheep's milk only, penteleu mixes sheep and cow, dalia and rucăr are cow only. Under the communist regime, food shortages pushed Romanian cooks to improvise a pressed cheese at home from milk, smântână, butter and eggs.
In Albania, kaçkavall ranks second only to white cheese, and some restaurants send out plates of it raw or fried while the main dishes cook. Bulgarians bake it into breakfast pastries, including the small kashkavalka, and pile it on toast for princesa, sometimes with ground pork. Romanian kitchens turn it into cașcaval pane or serve it with mămăligă. Across the region it stands in for other cheeses on pizza, and in the Levant it is the melting cheese of choice for pastries.
The word itself has drifted. In North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Levant, kashkaval often means any yellow cheese, so Gouda and Emmental get the label too. Hungary is the exception, where kaskavál points to this cheese alone. Israeli dairies large and small make their own, and Russia has a domestic brand alongside imported Balkan and Italian versions.
How Does Kashkaval Cheese Compare?
The most relevant cheeses to compare Kashkaval against.
