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Wife Cottage Cheese

A homemade cottage cheese made by curdling milk with sherry, draining whey, and mixing with cream and sugar.

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 ↓

Wife Cottage Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Combine the milk and sherry wine in a porcelain saucepan and cover it.

  2. Place the saucepan in a warm area until the curd forms.

Drain and finish

  1. Once the curd has formed, pour it into a linen cloth and hang it up to drain the whey.

  2. Transfer the curd to a bowl and mix in the thick cream using the back of a spoon until smooth.

  3. Stir in the sugar and serve with sweetened cream.

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. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

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

Sour milk
Provides the protein-rich base that coagulates into curd as it sours and thickens.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity that helps the milk proteins curdle and gives a subtle aroma.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the drained curd.
White granulated sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tang of the curd.

The step that matters

Draining the curd. Hanging the curd in cloth lets whey drain off slowly. Draining too little leaves the cheese watery and loose, while draining too long can make it dry and crumbly.

“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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