Why it works: Cream cheese and cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 473 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓
Cbeam Cheese Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Use butter to make small balls of cream cheese.
Sprinkle grated sapsago cheese over the cream cheese balls.
Serve the cheese balls on lettuce leaves with French dressing.
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.
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Cream cheese + cheesetop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together473 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,747 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together614 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together213 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lettuce
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, cheese, butter):
- Chivefits better
- Potatofits better
- Onionfits better
- Lettucethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, cheese, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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