It is, however, curded
from cow's milk, whole or partly skimmed, and sometimes from water
buffalo; hard, yellow and so buttery that the best of it, which comes
from Sorrento, is called _Cacio burro,_ butter cheese. Slightly salty,
with a spicy tang, it is eaten sliced when young and mild and used for
grating and seasoning when old, not only on the usual Italian pastes
but on sweets.
Different from the many grating cheeses made from little balls of curd
called _grana_, Caciocavallo is a _pasta fileta_, or drawn-curd
product. Because of this it is sometimes drawn out in long thick
threads and braided. It is a cheese for skilled artists to make
sculptures with, sometimes horses' heads, again bunches of grapes and
other fruits, even as Provolone is shaped like apples and pears and
often worked into elaborate bas-relief designs. But ordinarily the
horse's head is a plain tenpin in shape or a squat bottle with a knob
on the side by which it has been tied up, two cheeses at a time, on
opposite sides of a rafter, while being smoked lightly golden and
rubbed with olive oil and butter to make it all the more buttery.
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