Why it works: Butter and cottage cheese work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓
Cheese Tarts
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the dough
Mix the cottage cheese and butter together until smooth.
Add the flour and mix until combined.
Shape and bake
Roll the mixture and mold it into the shape of pockets.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 to 7 minutes.
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.
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Butter + cottage cheesetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together376 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + cottage cheesetop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together315 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Adds fat that makes the dough rich and tender and helps it hold together.
- Flour
- Provides structure so the mixture holds its shape when rolled and molded.
- Cottage cheese
- Supplies moisture and tangy dairy flavor to the dough.
The step that matters
Baking the pockets. Five to seven minutes is a short bake, so the pockets can under-set or over-brown quickly; watch the color and firmness closely as they bake.
“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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