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Neufchatel Cheese Molded with Nuts

A Neufchatel cheese mixture of butter, sweet cream, red pepper, and nuts, molded into an oval and served with salad and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,087 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Neufchatel Cheese Molded with Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine melted butter, sweet cream, red pepper, and chopped nuts (or olives and pimentos) in a bowl.

  2. Mix until well combined.

Shape and serve

  1. Press the mixture into an oval shape on a serving dish.

  2. Serve with a vegetable salad of your choice, such as celery, tomato, or lettuce, and crackers.

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. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the mixture soft and spreadable.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture bind and taste smooth.
English walnuts or pecans
Adds crunch and nutty flavor, giving the spread texture against the soft cheese.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, pepper, olive):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, olive. 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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