Like the chorus in a Greek comedy, cheese serves a lot of functions in lasagna. In the case of ricotta, it can be the snow-white barrier between the pasta and the sauce. Cheese can also be added to béchamel, essentially turning it into a Mornay sauce. And who could forgo the golden-brown and bubbling molten cheese icing on this noodle cake? There are lots of different cheese options when it comes to lasagna. Here are some of our favorites.

SOFT CHEESES

Ricotta’s mildness and soft, ever-so-slightly fluffy texture make it the ideal buffer between pasta and sauce. It has enough firmness to give the layers a little bit of height, and it absorbs flavor and color from the sauce. Some Italian-American recipes from the 1980s and ’90s that predated the wide availability of ricotta called for cottage cheese instead. This may sound a little blasphemous, but moms in the Midwest have been swearing by it for decades, and plenty of people claim it’s a dead ringer for ricotta once it’s all been baked together.

Cream cheese? Yes, we endorse this move, though sparingly. It comes in handy when you’re looking for a denser texture and a little more acidity. In our Spinach Artichoke Dip Lasagna (this page), the cream cheese melts into the vegetables to create a rich filling that can stand on its own without any sauce. In our Sweet Crespelle with Lemon & Tart Cherry Sauce (this page), cream cheese forms the base of a sweet filling for a fruity dessert version of the tomato-covered manicotti we know and love.

HARD CHEESES

When you see Parmesan or Pecorino Romano in a recipe, it’s most likely there to contribute flavor rather than texture or structure. These are intensely salty aged cheeses that have very low moisture content, so they’re often grated and added to something that does have a lot of moisture, like a béchamel or a ricotta. These types of cheeses have a higher melting point than their softer counterparts, so when we ask you to finely grate some and sprinkle it on top of a lasagna in this book, it’s less about creating a melty top and more about adding another layer of flavor—just like you might sprinkle a little bit of flaky salt onto a finished dish.

MELTY CHEESES

When it comes to getting that perfect slow-motion cheese pull when you lift out the first square of lasagna from a hot pan (you know—the one you’ve seen on Instagram Stories or in Stouffer’s commercials), you’re going to need a cheese that’s designed for melting. In the Classic Meat Sauce & Ricotta Lasagna (this page), mozzarella does the heavy lifting. In the Ethiopian Lasagna (this page), it’s all about the melty orange Cheddar. There are a lot of options in the universe of lasagna cheese, but the ones you’ll see most often in this book are Taleggio, Fontina, mozzarella, and Monterey Jack.