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Dessert

Cottage Cheese

A fresh cheese made by separating whey from sour milk, drained, mashed, and seasoned with cream, salt, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,920 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Place sour milk in a warm spot until whey separates from curd.

  2. Pour into a bag and hang to drain until all whey has dripped out.

  3. Turn out the curd and mash it with a spoon until very fine.

Season and serve

  1. Add cream and coarse sea salt to taste before serving.

  2. Optionally, add a little nutmeg for extra flavor.

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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its natural souring causes the milk to separate into soft curds and liquid whey.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the cheese smoother and milder.

The step that matters

Draining the curd. Draining must go until all the whey has dripped out. Leftover whey keeps the curd wet and sour, so it tastes thin and spoils faster.

“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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