Pecorino Romano

Pecorino romano is a hard, salty cheese made from sheep’s milk, commonly grated over pasta. Its name simply means “sheep’s cheese of Rome” in Italian—a description, not a brand, though the term is legally protected. While it originated in Lazio, almost all production now happens on Sardinia. European Union law requires that manufacturing take place only in Sardinia, Lazio, or the province of Grosseto for it to carry the protected designation of origin (PDO).

This cheese is one of Italy’s oldest, still made by the original recipe. It was a key food for ancient Roman legionaries, who got a daily ration of about 27 grams—roughly one Roman ounce—along with bread and farro soup. Its long shelf life made it ideal for campaigns, and it was prized as an energy-dense, easy-to-digest food. Today, it’s mostly used in central and southern Italy. On May Day, Roman families traditionally eat it with fresh fava beans during outings in the Roman Campagna. It ranks as the fourth most exported Italian cheese, with 22,000 tons shipped overseas each year.

The earliest version of pecorino romano was developed in the countryside around Rome, with production methods recorded by Latin writers Marcus Terentius Varro and Pliny the Elder roughly 2,000 years ago. Until the late 1800s, it was mainly produced in Lazio. In 1884, Rome’s city council banned salting the cheese in grocers’ shops, but that didn’t stop salting and cheesemaking facilities from popping up on the city’s outskirts and elsewhere in the province. A sharp rise in demand—beyond what Lazio’s flocks could supply—pushed producers to expand into Sardinia. There, deforestation from human activity had created soil well-suited for monoculture farming, attracting Roman entrepreneurs.

After the 1951 Stresa Convention, which tackled counterfeiting of traditional foods, and the first DOC designations in the dairy sector in 1955, pecorino cheese production gained formal protection in Sardinia, Lazio, and Grosseto. The Consortium for the Protection of Pecorino Romano Cheese was founded in 1979, based in Macomer, a town with many established cheese factories. In 1981, Italy’s Ministry of Agriculture gave the consortium oversight of production and trade, and in 2002 it took on the role of protecting the cheese’s PDO status.

Pecorino romano is a hard, cooked cheese made solely from sheep’s milk. The milk is coagulated with rennet at 38–40 °C (100–104 °F). Once the curd sets, it’s broken into rice-sized pieces and cooked at no more than 48 °C (118 °F). The rennet must come from sheep raised in the same production area, so the cheese isn’t suitable for vegetarians. The wheels are cylindrical, 25–40 cm tall and 25–35 cm in diameter, weighing 20–35 kg (44–77 lb). They have a thin ivory rind, sometimes coated with protective substances, and are stamped with a logo showing the province of origin. About 40% of production is consumed in Italy; of the exports, more than half go to the United States.