Quark (dairy product) Quark (dairy product) Quark or quarg is a type of fresh dairy product made by warming soured milk until the desired amount of curdling is met, and then straining it. It can be classified as fresh acid-set cheese. Traditional quark can be made without rennet, but in modern dairies small quantities of rennet are typically added. It is soft, white and unaged, and usually has no salt added. It is traditional in the cuisines of German-speaking, Slavic and Scandinavian countries. Dictionaries sometimes translate it as curd cheese, cottage cheese, farmer cheese or junket. In Germany, quark and cottage cheese are
Rennet of rennet is its protease chymosin cleaving the kappa casein chain. Casein is the main protein of milk. Cleavage causes casein to stick to other cleaved casein molecules and form a network. It can cluster better in the presence of calcium and phosphate, which is why it is occasionally added in cheese making especially from calcium phosphate-poor goat milk. The solid truncated casein protein network traps other components of milk like fats and minerals to create cheese. In digestion it is followed by other proteases cutting casein further to ultimately release and absorb the component amino acids and minerals. In