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To Make Cream Cheese

A homemade cheese made by curdling milk with rennet, draining, pressing, and drying with salt and strawberry leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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To Make Cream Cheese

Why it works: Milk and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,130 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Add one large spoonful of rennet to five quarts of milk and mix lightly.

  2. Pour the mixture onto a cloth placed over a sieve.

  3. Let it drain until dry.

Press and salt

  1. Break the cheese. Cut it.

  2. Turn it in a clean cloth and return it to the sieve.

  3. Place a two-pound weight on top.

  4. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt.

  5. Let it stand overnight to firm up.

Dry and ripen

  1. Once dry, place it on a board to continue drying.

  2. When dry, lay a few strawberry leaves on top.

  3. Ripen it between two plates in a warm place.

  4. Turn it and add fresh leaves daily.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + strawberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the body of the cheese once curdled and drained.
Rennet
Coagulates the milk proteins so they separate into curds and whey.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cheese and draws out moisture as it firms.

“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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