Cottage cheese is fresh cow's-milk curd kept in soft lumps, usually in a creamy dressing. The name points to farm kitchens, where people made a simple cheese from milk they had on hand.
It is unripened and mild. It is not a melting cheese, and it is not the same product as ricotta. The lumps are the point.
History
Fresh curd cheese is older than any brand. Farmers heated milk, set it, and ate the curds before there was time or salt enough to make a wheel. In English the result was called cottage cheese because it belonged to the cottage, not to a cheese market or a monastery.
The modern tub is an American grocery product of the twentieth century. Dairies cooked the curd, washed it, and packed it in cream or a milk dressing so it would keep a few weeks and taste less sour. It became a diet food and a breakfast food in the United States. A similar fresh cheese existed in Britain. The dressed, lumpy American tub is the one this page means.
How it is made
Milk is set, the curd is cut, and it is cooked until the lumps are firm enough to hold their shape. The whey is drained. The curds are often washed, which keeps them mild. Large curd and small curd are two cuts of the same idea. A dressing of cream or milk is folded back in. Dry-curd cottage cheese skips that dressing. It is sourer, drier, and more plainly a curd.
There is no rennet-driven aging, no rind, and no wheel. The cheese is finished when it is packed. Quark, the fresh cheese of Germany and its neighbors, is the closest European cousin, but quark is usually smooth or only slightly grainy, and it is not sold as lumps in cream. Ricotta is made by heating whey, not by dressing a cut curd. The three can share a breakfast table. They are not interchangeable without a change in texture.
Taste
Creamed cottage cheese tastes of cold milk, salt, and a light tang. The curds are milky and a little chewy. The dressing is the soft part. Small curd feels finer. Large curd pops against the spoon. Dry curd is sharper and more austere.
It should smell clean and faintly sour, like fresh dairy, not like old milk. A bitter taste or a yeasty smell means the tub is done. Cottage cheese does not develop a better flavor in the refrigerator. It only declines.
In the kitchen
Eat it cold. The usual places are breakfast, a salad, a baked potato, and a plate of fruit. It can stand in for ricotta in a baked dish, such as a lasagna or a blintz, when the lumps are acceptable. The texture will be coarser, and the taste a little tangier. Blend it if a recipe needs a smooth filling.
Do not expect it to melt into a stretch or a sauce. Heat makes the curds tighter and can split the dressing. It is a poor frying cheese. Salted, herbed cottage cheese is a simple spread. A cheese board is the wrong place for it, unless the board is really a breakfast plate.
Around the world
The dressed tub is an American staple, and it is also common in Britain and in other countries that adopted the same grocery cheese. People eat it at home more than in restaurants. It has no feast and no protected region. The appeal is that it is fresh, mild, and high in protein without a strong cheese flavor.
Across eastern and northern Europe, fresh curd cheeses do the same daily work under other names. Those cheeses have their own methods and their own dishes. Calling them cottage cheese is only a translation. When an American recipe says cottage cheese, it means the lumpy dressed curd, not quark, not ricotta, and not a farmer's wheel.