Skip to main content
Salad

Cheese Paste

A cheese paste made with cheese, butter, wine, vinegar, pepper, mustard, flour, eggs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheese Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Pound cheese in a mortar with a little butter.

  2. Add wine, vinegar, pepper, and mustard to taste until it reaches a stiff paste consistency.

  3. For cream cheese paste, mix with a little flour and butter.

  4. Beat two or three eggs with a little cream and add to the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve as a relish with bread and butter or biscuits.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Cheese
Forms the bulk of the paste and supplies its main flavour.
Butter
Adds fat, softening the paste and giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Eggs
Enrich the paste and help bind it together.
Flour
Thickens the cream cheese paste and gives it body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the rich cheese.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the eggs and paste.

The step that matters

Adding the wine and vinegar. Liquids loosen cheese and butter quickly, so adding them a little at a time and tasting as you go keeps the paste at the stiff consistency the recipe calls for.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, wine, vinegar, pepper, flour, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, wine, vinegar, pepper, flour, egg. 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.

More cheese paste recipes

for Sandwiches 3 See all 2 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes