Popularly, the name is held to derive from
mascarpa, an unrelated milk product made from the
whey of
stracchino (a young, barely aged cheese), or from
mascarpia, a word in the local dialect for
ricotta. Unlike ricotta, which is made from whey, mascarpone is made from cream. According to the Lombard journalist and writer Gianni Brera, the original form of the name should rather be
"mascherpone", deriving, in his view, from
Cascina Mascherpa, an unidentified locality situated in the lower Po Valley on the border between the provinces of Lodi, Milan and Pavia.
Mascherpa, a dialect term of uncertain etymology that means “ricotta”, is also a widespread surname in the same geographic area. This interpretation is consistent with one of the earliest official attestations of the product name outside Lombardy, dating to 1933–1934, when the dairy of
Cison di Valmarino (Treviso), owned by Count Gerolamo Brandolini d’Adda and directed by Remo Dolce, registered the trademark "Mascherpone Valmarino" with the Ministry of Corporations and with the Intellectual Property Office of Treviso (trademark no. 48371). The registration, made public through local archival and journalistic sources, testifies to the start of production and commercial distribution in the Treviso area already in the early twentieth century. As highlighted by recent food-historical reconstructions, it is described as a cream-based, acid-set dairy product already at that time. Previous historical uses of the term “mascarpone” may not have corresponded to the modern dairy cream produced by acid-heat coagulation of cream. ==Uses==