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Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Then the acidified whey is heated to near boiling. Ricotta curds are creamy white in appearance, and slightly sweet in taste. The fat content varies depending on the milk used. In this form, it is somewhat similar in texture to some fresh cheese variants, though considerably lighter. The production of ricotta in the Italian peninsula dates back to the Bronze Age.

In the second millennium BC, ceramic vessels called milk boilers started to appear frequently and were apparently unique to the peninsula. These were designed to boil milk at high temperatures and prevent the milk from boiling over. The fresh acid-coagulated cheeses produced with these boilers were probably made with whole milk. However, the production of rennet-coagulated cheese overtook the production of fresh whole-milk cheeses during the first millennium BC.

Bronze cheese graters found in the graves of the Etruscan elite prove that hard-grating cheeses were popular with the aristocracy. The increased production of rennet-coagulated cheese led to a large supply of sweet whey as a byproduct. Cheesemakers then started using a new recipe, which used a mixture of whey and milk to make the traditional ricotta as it is known today. The ancient Romans made ricotta, but writers on agriculture such as Cato the Elder, Marcus Terentius Varro, and Columella do not mention it. They described the production of rennet-coagulated cheese but did not write about milk boilers or acid-coagulated cheese. Ceramic milk boilers were still used by Apennine shepherds to make ricotta in the 19th century AD. Today, metal milk boilers are used, but production methods have changed little since ancient times.