Brace yourself for the mother of all cheeses

It's natural, free from additives and as locally sourced as you can get – and many of us have already had it so why aren't more people using breast milk?

Daniel Angerer, a chef in New York, is trying to change that. He has blogged about making cheese from the extra breast milk his wife has been producing since the birth of their daughter.

They had an overflow of pumped milk and were running out of space in the freezer. "To pour it down the drain," says Angerer, "would be like wasting gold."

He has used a basic method involving yoghurt and rennet to produce a cheese that is ready after about two weeks. Angerer isn't offering this for public consumption, although a few reporters in the US have been along to his restaurant to try it. The immediate response (among adults I spoke to, at least) varies from mild yuckiness to sheer revulsion. "There is a mental block," says Angerer. "I suppose any kind of human liquid takes on a weird, almost sexual, aspect. But we drink milk from animals and, to me, this isn't that different."

What does the milk taste like? "Like a cow eating different types of grass, it depends what the mother eats – though I'm not calling my wife a cow. She is vegetarian and eats a lot of leafy vegetables, so it has a slight spice that comes through. It's also sweeter than cow's milk."

Angerer says that, "as a chef, I am always trying to create different dishes and this was just an experiment with taste and texture, to see if it could be done". The version pictured is encrusted with pumpkin seeds and served with beets – just in case you want to try it at home.