A soft, delicate, mild cheese, traditionally made from buffalo milk but now made from cow's milk (known as fior de latte). No one is quite sure when water buffalo were brought to Italy from India. The Greeks or the early Christians may have introduced them. Certainly, by the 16th century, they had become a feature of southern Italian agricultural life. At this time, farmers began to use buffalo milk to make mozzarella. Its popularity soon reached the northern regions, where cheese makers started to produce inferior versions made from cow's milk.
The word "mozzarella" is the diminutive form of mozza, a cheese, which mozzarella was originally called. Mozza derives from mozzare, meaning "to cut off" or "dock" (as in docking a dog's tail), which probably refers to the making of the cheese: the cheese maker removes big portions of the cheese from the whey liquid and breaks or cuts off the pieces by hand. See also buffalo mozzarella.
