Cream cheese or mascarpone — can I swap one for the other?

Both are soft white spreadable dairy and they look nearly identical in the tub, which is why the substitution question comes up constantly. The differences are small on a spoon and quite noticeable in a finished dish, and they are entirely predictable from how each one is made.

Step by step

1. Substitute mascarpone for cream cheese confidently.You are trading up in fat and losing tang. In a frosting, a dip or a no-bake cheesecake, the result is richer and milder, which most people prefer. Add a squeeze of lemon if you want the tang back.
2. Substitute cream cheese for mascarpone with more care.You are losing fat and gaining acidity. In tiramisu the tang is noticeable and slightly out of place; beating in a couple of tablespoons of double cream per 250g closes most of the gap.
3. Do not substitute in a hot sauce without thinking.Mascarpone melts into a hot sauce smoothly because of the fat. Cream cheese can go slightly grainy and its gums can make the sauce gluey. If a recipe stirs it into something hot, mascarpone is the safer one.
4. Expect a firmer set from cream cheese.The stabilising gums plus the lower fat make cream cheese hold its shape better. That is an advantage in a no-bake cheesecake and a piped frosting, and a disadvantage where you want silkiness.
5. Beat both cold and briefly.Over-beating either one, particularly with sugar, thins it out and can make it weep. Mix just until smooth. This is the commonest cause of a runny cream cheese frosting.

Tips

• For a cream cheese frosting that holds, use full-fat block-style cream cheese rather than a soft spreadable tub, keep everything cold and beat as little as possible.
• Mascarpone can be made at home: heat 500ml of double cream to about 85°C, stir in a tablespoon of lemon juice, hold for a few minutes, then drain through muslin overnight.
• Half-fat and light versions of both contain more water and more stabiliser. They set less well and split more readily under heat.
• A spoonful of mascarpone is the easiest way to enrich a pasta sauce, a soup or a risotto without the sauce splitting.
• Both freeze poorly on their own — they separate and go grainy — but both survive freezing inside a baked cheesecake reasonably well.

Alternatives

• Mascarpone: Made by warming cream and setting it with an acid such as citric or tartaric acid, then draining. No culture, so no tang. Around 44 per cent fat, very rich, silky, and it melts smoothly into hot sauces without splitting. Traditional in tiramisu and excellent stirred into risotto or a pasta sauce.
• Full-fat cream cheese: Made by culturing cream and milk with lactic bacteria, then draining. Tangy, around 33 per cent fat, and usually containing a stabiliser such as locust bean gum, which is why it holds its shape. The standard base for cheesecakes and for cream cheese frosting.
• Ricotta: A distant third option — much lower in fat, grainier, and made from whey rather than cream. It works in baked cheesecakes and in fillings but it is not a substitute in a frosting or in tiramisu, where the texture would be wrong.
• Quark: Very low fat, sharp and fresh. Substitutes for cream cheese only where the richness is not the point. In a frosting or a set cheesecake it will be thin and sour.

Questions people ask