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Dessert

Louisiana Cream Cheese

A cheese made by draining clabbered milk, then molded and served with sweet cream, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Louisiana Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Drain the curd

  1. Pour clabbered milk into a clean cotton cloth and let it drip for 2 hours.

Mold and serve

  1. Fill star, flower, or heart-shaped cheese molds with the drained cheese.

  2. Let the cheese sit in the molds until ready to serve.

  3. Carefully turn the cheese out onto a plate.

  4. Serve with a pitcher of rich sweet cream mixed with sugar and grated nutmeg.

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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Clabbered milk
Its curds form the body of the cheese once the whey drains away.
Rich sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture to the cheese when served alongside it.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream served with the cheese.

The step that matters

Carefully turn the cheese out onto a plate. The drained curd is soft and fragile, so it can tear or slump if handled roughly. Letting it rest in the mold until ready to serve helps it hold its shape when released.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, 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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