Stina’s Liptauer Cheese

A timing note: Stina’s Liptauer Cheese is best if made a day in advance and ripened in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

A quantity note: This recipe makes about 1 cup of Liptauer Cheese.

1. Put the cream cheese in a large bowl. Use a mixer to whip the cream cheese for a few minutes to lighten it then add the butter and mix it well with the cheese.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients: the capers, caraway seeds, paprika, grated onion, celery seed, salt and parsley. Combine them all together well.
3. Put the cheese in a covered container and refrigerate it for 24 hours to blend and develop the flavours. The cheese will be good even if you are obliged to skip this step, however.
4. To serve, place the cheese in a small serving bowl, sprinkle a little paprika over it, and decorate it with a few caper berries, if using them. Thin rounds of black bread or crackers go very well with it. The cheese may also be spread on small rounds of bread or crackers and then sprinkled with a little paprika to make individual hors d’oeuvres. You might place a caper berry on each one or arrange the hors d’oeuvres around a bowl or ramekin of caper berries.

An acknowledgement: Stina’s Liptauer Cheese is adapted from a recipe in “Stina, the Story of a Cook” by Herman Smith (1945). Not only is the book an excellent source for recipes, it is, as well, a picture of a rural American past that is no more. ‘Stina’ warmly and lovingly recreates this part of America’s heritage which hopefully lives on in the spirits of many who have inherited the land worked and looked after by the farming families of those days.