Pat Dollard

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The Daily Mail:

In the world of haute cuisine, pushing the boundaries of taste has become commonplace.

But in a move that has delighted some and disgusted others, a chef has made cheese out of his wife’s breast milk.

The idea struck chef Daniel Angerer eight weeks ago after his wife gave birth and she began freezing her excess milk.

As she produced far more than she could use for their their daughter Arabella, Daniel became curious as to whether human milk could be used in the kitchen.

So he began to experiment in using it to make cheese. He aged it for a fortnight before testing it – and was amazed at its sweet taste.

Now the unusual cheese is on sale at the chef’s Klee Brasserie in New York.

He is using it in a range of upmarket dishes including maple caramelized pumpkin encrusted cheese with concord grapes, and cheese rolled in dehydrated porcini mushroom powder with burned onion chutney.

How to make it… if you should ever want to

Ingredients:

4 cups mother’s milk

1½ teaspoons yogurt (must be active cultured yogurt)

1/8 tablet rennet

1 teaspoon sea salt

For recipe, see Daniel Angerer’s blog

Daniel said: ‘Being a chef, you’re curious about anything in terms of flavour – you look out for something new and what you can do with it.

‘After two weeks ageing, it was somewhat like a raw-milk cheese – it had all the flavours in there. It tastes just like really sweet cow’s milk.

‘It wasn’t like, “Hey, this is such an amazing cheese.” It’s just like, “Can you use human milk? Yes, you absolutely can!”

‘Our baby has plenty of back-up mother’s milk in the freezer, so whoever wants to try it is welcome to try it as long as the supply lasts.’

He added that his ‘cooking instincts are rather natural… such as sourcing ingredients from the local market… but this is a whole other level of “natural”.’

Daniel offers a recipe for the adventurous to make their own. It requires four cups of milk, a small amount of yogurt, rennet and a teaspoon of sea salt, which he said will yield half a pound of cheese.

The chef, who first announced the project on his blog, received responses ranging from ‘gross..who’s supposed to eat this’, to ‘fabulous’.

His supporters are now urging him to consider making breast milk butter and breast milk ice cream.