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Buttermilk Cheese, Plain and Spiced, German Plan

A cheese made from buttermilk, salt, spices, and alcohol, then aged for four days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and whey share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Buttermilk Cheese, Plain and Spiced, German Plan

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese

  1. Boil the buttermilk and let it cool.

  2. Place the cooled buttermilk in a cheese form or heavy linen bag to drain the whey.

  3. Once drained, add coarse sea salt and spices to taste, and mix thoroughly.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of alcohol for each pound of cheese and knead the mixture well.

  5. Form the cheese into desired sizes and shapes.

Age the cheese

  1. Dry the cheeses in the air, then wrap them in clean linen cloths moistened with hot whey.

  2. Pack the wrapped cheeses in a well-covered cask and store in a warm place.

  3. Let the cheeses age for four days before use; they improve with age.

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. Buttermilk + wheytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Cheese + wheytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Buttermilk + cheesetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Its proteins set into the curd that forms the body of the cheese.
Alcohol
Adds aroma and helps preserve the cheese during aging.

“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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