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Dessert

Neufchatel Cheese

A soft cheese made from cream cheese, butter, parsley, nuts, and walnut meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 865 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Neufchatel Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Grate the cream cheese and butter together.

  2. Mix in the chopped parsley and chopped nuts.

Shape and serve

  1. Mould the mixture and turn it out onto a serving plate.

  2. Top with the walnut meats.

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. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  2. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Nuts + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cream cheese + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 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

Cream cheese
Forms the creamy, tangy base that gives the spread its body and structure.
Butter
Adds richness and softness, helping the mixture blend smoothly and spread easily.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch that contrasts with the soft cheese.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a light, green flavour.

The step that matters

Turning the mixture out of the mould. Soft cheese holds its shape only when its fat and protein are firm enough to support it, so a loosely set mixture can slump or break when unmoulded.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, butter, nuts, walnut, meat):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, butter, nuts, walnut, meat. 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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