Cheese ball (hors d'oeuvre)

A cheese ball is a cold party appetizer from the United States, a molded cheese spread served at gatherings. It is usually built from grated hard cheese and softened cream cheese, sometimes bound with a spoonful of mayonnaise, then shaped into a sphere, chilled until firm again, and rolled in chopped nuts, seeds or herbs for a decorative coating. Cooks also form it into wheels, logs or novelty shapes such as owls and pineapples. It is typically set out with crackers or raw vegetables at holiday parties. The dish belongs to mid-twentieth-century American entertaining; a recipe credited to a 1944 cookbook by Virginia Safford is the earliest one the source cites. It later fell out of fashion, and the word cheeseball came to mean something tasteless, before the dish enjoyed a revival in the twenty-first century.