Where does the term “Pot Cheese” come from and What does Pot Cheese mean?

Now we call it “cottage cheese,” probably because the old-fashioned names, pot cheese, bonnyclabber, and smearcase (which comes to us from the German Schmierktise, “spreading cheese”), are no longer sufficiently elite for the modern dining room.

But in grandmother’s time the curds were separated from the water by heating the coagulated milk in a pot.

Hence the name, pot cheese.