Name: Pimiento-Cream Cheese
Ingredients: 12 pounds cream cheese; 1 pound pimiento peppers; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Cream cheese and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,195 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Pimiento-Cream Cheese

Ingredients

12 pounds cream cheese
1 pound pimiento peppers
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

Blend the cream cheese until smooth.
Finely chop the pimiento peppers.
Mix the chopped pimiento peppers into the cream cheese.
Add coarse sea salt to taste.
Store in glass jars.

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.

Cream cheese + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,195 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Forms the creamy base and gives the spread its smooth, rich body.
Pimiento peppers: Add mild sweetness, a red color and a little moisture to the cheese.

“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.