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Dessert

Italian Cheese,

A sweet cheese made with cream, lemon, milk, almonds, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Italian Cheese,

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the cream, lemon juice, and sweet milk together for 10 minutes.

  2. Place a deep sieve lined with muslin over a bowl.

  3. Pour the melted mixture into the sieve to drain.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished cheese a smooth, soft texture.
Lemons
Their acid makes the milk proteins curdle, so solids separate from the liquid.
Sweet milk
Supplies milk proteins and moisture that set into the soft curds.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Melting the cream, lemon juice, and milk together. The acid curdles the milk proteins as the mixture heats. Heating too hard or stirring too little can scorch the cream on the base of the pan, leaving a burnt taste and uneven curds.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, almond, sugar. 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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