Why it works: Cream and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cream Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Make the curd
Mix the cream and milk together in a bowl.
Add the liquid rennet and stir well.
Place the mixture in a pan of hot water until it thickens into curd.
Line a small mold with Swiss muslin and pour in the curd.
Let it sit for 8 hours.
Press and ripen
Place a thin board on top of the curd and weigh it down with a 1 lb weight.
Leave it pressed for one day.
Remove the cheese from the mold and wrap it in a linen cloth, changing the cloth frequently.
After four days, the cheese will be ready to eat.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Cream + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cream
- Provides fat, which gives the cheese a rich, smooth texture.
- Milk
- Supplies proteins and sugars that form the curd and give the cheese its body.
- Liquid rennet
- Enzyme that clots the milk proteins into a soft curd.
The step that matters
Placing the mixture in hot water until it thickens into curd. Rennet works within a narrow temperature range. Too cool and the milk clots slowly or not at all; too hot and the enzyme is destroyed, leaving a weak or runny curd.
“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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