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Potted Cheese

A cheese paste made with butter, mace, salt, and sherry, packed in jars and covered with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potted Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese paste

  1. Grate the cheese.

  2. Pound the cheese in a mortar to a smooth paste with butter, mace, salt, and sherry.

  3. Pack the mixture into earthen jars.

Cover and store

  1. Cover the cheese with clarified butter, which is melted butter poured away from the sediment.

  2. Store in a cool place.

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

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

  2. Cheese + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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

Old cheese
Provides the main flavor and, once pounded with butter, the bulk of the paste.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the cheese blend into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, lightly moistening the paste and rounding out the cheese flavor.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed layer over the surface that helps keep air out of the cheese.

The step that matters

Pounding the cheese to a smooth paste. Grated cheese must be worked thoroughly with butter so the fats emulsify and the paste has an even texture. Leftover lumps or separated fat make the potted cheese grainy and uneven when spread.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, sherry. 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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