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Artificial Cheese

A cheese made by curdling milk and cream with eggs and vinegar, then draining in cheesecloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,493 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Artificial Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Boil the milk and cream together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and wine vinegar.

  3. Simmer until it forms a tender curd.

Drain

  1. Tie the curd in cheesecloth and hang it to drain.

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. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  5. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the main body and liquid that the curd forms from.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the cheese richer and softer in texture.
Eggs
Help the curd set and bind it into a firmer, sliceable mass.
Wine vinegar
Acidifies the milk so its proteins separate into curds and whey.

The step that matters

Simmer until it forms a tender curd. Heating too hard or too long can make the curd tough and rubbery, while stopping too early leaves it loose. Gentle simmering lets the proteins set softly.

“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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