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Preparing Stilton Cheese

A method for making Stilton cheese from fresh milk, rennet, lemon, salt, and pressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Preparing Stilton Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Heat the milk to its natural temperature.

  2. Add the rennet and let the milk curdle.

  3. Strain the curd through a cloth.

  4. Let the curd rest wrapped in the cloth.

Salt and press

  1. Fill a tin cylinder with alternate layers of curd and salt.

  2. Cover the layers with another board.

  3. Turn the cylinder every 2 to 3 hours for the first day.

  4. Turn the cylinder 2 to 3 times a day for the next 3 to 4 days.

  5. Remove the cheese.

  6. Wrap the cheese in a cloth wet with boiling water.

  7. Press the cheese until dry.

  8. Turn the cheese twice a day.

  9. Protect the cheese from flies and insects.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + lambtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh milk
Provides the curd that forms the body of the cheese.
Lamb's maw
Supplies rennet, which sets the milk into curd.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture from the curd and seasons the cheese.

The step that matters

Turn the cylinder every 2 to 3 hours for the first day. Regular turning lets whey drain evenly so the curd knits into a uniform wheel. Uneven draining can leave weak or misshapen spots.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, lamb, lemon):

  1. Peppermintfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, lamb, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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