This is rather controversial topic because different countries recognize different kinds of cheese let alone what can be made out of it so what bears the name “cheese cake/pie” in one country might be not recognized as such in another.
So, cheese. Depending on country you have either one or two categories of cheese recognized: so called cottage cheese (or Quark/kvarg in Germanic language countries) and the rest of hard or semi-hard products made of milk. There’s also Italy where some cheeses (like mozzarella, provolone or scamorza) are considered to be pasta but that’s Italy and it doesn’t deserve second mention in this post.
Cottage cheese can be also divided into two categories: grainy and homogeneous mass. The first kind is more common in Eastern Europe (I’ve seen it in Ukraine, Czechia and Hungary for example; it can be also found in Germany but only in rather small packaging and runny), the second kind is more common in Germany.
The conventional hard or semi-hard cheese can be made into a pie usually by grating it, mixing with cream and eggs or sour cream and baking.
And of course there’s USA where what they call cheesecake is made (if you believe Wickedpedia) from either cream cheese (i.e. product where cheese-making process was terminated halfway) or ricotta (made from whey instead of milk, so not a cheese either).
Now, let’s look at real cheese cakes/pies I’ve encountered so far or even made myself:
- Ukraine — there’s a traditional Ukrainian dish сирники, patties made from grainy cottage cheese mixed with semolina or millet and flour and fried. Those I like and approve;
- Germany — there are two similar variation of what is called käsekuchen(literally cheese cake). In both cases it’s mostly Quark (homogeneous cottage cheese) mixed with semolina and baked, in one case they’re also made more cake-like by mixing milk and starch and adding pieces of tangerine. This variation I bake myself time from time, it goes even better with a bit of sour cream (Schmand) or gräddfil on top;
- Switzerland — there they have Chäschueche(essentially käsekuchen pronounced in Swiss German) which is obviously nothing like its German counterpart. Instead we have a small tart made from local chäs(semi-hard semi-sticky Swiss cheese with stinky rind) that’s rather savoury instead of sweet. I’ve tried them once, found them edible but not something spectacular;
- Sweden — this country has ostkaka(literally cheese cake) which can be described as an interesting cheese that was too good to wait for it so it was baked instead of ripening all the way. Obviously I buy it when possible and eat with lingon jam, there’s especially good version available in Jul season;
- Sweden — there’s not enough of it! Sweden also offers västerbottensostpaj(or simply västerbottenpaj) which is a quiche-like pie with filling made from the best cheese in the world (from Burträsk obviously) combined with eggs and cream (I should try gräddfil instead) and baked. I enjoy them both in Sweden and sometimes bake it myself (when I have The Cheese) because it’s worth it.
And an the end several fun facts:
- German name for cottage cheese (Quark) is most likely the one that got into Finnegans Wake, from which it was borrowed later for certain physical term (though physicists playing stringed models refuse to acknowledge that concept);
- in Czechia grainy cottage cheese (tvaroh) is sold in pressed triangles, if you wrap a cabbage leaf around it you can troll Japanophiles that it’s local onigiri (like I did once);
- in Sweden they actually have different names for grainy cottage cheese (called “cottage cheese”) and homogeneous one (called “kvarg”);
- and in Ukraine it’s all called simply “cheese” (maybe because hard cheese was not common in Ukraine, only hard cheese-like product sold in Soviet times);
- another fun fact from Ukraine—cottage cheese sold on markets by individuals varies in units depending on region: in some places it’s sold by weight, in some places it’s sold by volume (using standard half-litre jars for example), in some places it’s sold by saucers (i.e. how much of it you can put on a saucer) and in other places it’s sold by amount yielded from 3 litres of milk.
Okay, back to doing nothing.