Name: Potato Cheese
Ingredients: 5 pounds potatoes; 1 pound milk; Rennet (as needed); Coarse sea salt (to taste); Caraway seeds (to taste); Cumin seeds (to taste)

Why it works: Caraway and cumin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Potato Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curd

Boil the potatoes until soft, keeping the skins on.
Peel the potatoes carefully and mash them into a smooth paste.
In a bowl, combine the potato paste, milk, rennet, salt, caraway seeds, and cumin seeds.
Knead the mixture well and cover it.
Let the mixture sit for 3–4 days in winter or 2–3 days in summer.
Knead the mixture again.

Drain and harden

Place the mixture into wicker molds to drain until dry.
Once dry and firm, place the cheeses in a warm area to harden gradually.

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.

Caraway + cumintop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together81 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Potato + cumintop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together972 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Potato + carawaytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together115 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
Milk + carawaytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 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

Potatoes: Form the bulk of the cheese and give it a soft, moist, paste-like body.
Milk: Adds moisture and dairy richness, helping the potato mass bind into a cheese.
Rennet: Causes the milk proteins to coagulate and set the mixture into curd.
Caraway seeds: Contribute a warm, aromatic flavour to the finished cheese.
Cumin seeds: Contribute an earthy, aromatic flavour to the finished cheese.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture sit for 3–4 days in winter or 2–3 days in summer. Rennet needs time and steady conditions to set the milk proteins and develop flavour. Sitting too long or too warm can spoil the mixture, so the timing should follow the season.