New York-style cheesecake traditionally uses which fresh cheese as its base?

New York-style cheesecake traditionally uses cream cheese as its base.

Its dense, smooth texture and rich tang distinguish it from lighter cheesecakes made with ricotta, cottage cheese, quark, or mascarpone. The filling usually combines cream cheese with sugar and eggs, often over a crumb crust or sponge-cake base.

The style developed in New York’s Jewish-American restaurant and deli culture. Lindy’s, opened in Manhattan in 1921, helped make the dessert famous, while Junior’s, founded in Brooklyn in 1950, became another celebrated name. Cream cheese itself was invented in the United States in the 19th century and became especially important in American Jewish cooking.

A common mix-up is treating every cheesecake as a cream-cheese cake. Traditional Italian cheesecakes may use ricotta, German versions may use quark, and some older American recipes used cottage cheese. Those are valid regional styles, but the canonical base for New York-style cheesecake is cream cheese.