Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cream Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Make the curd
In a granite pan, combine 5 quarts of milk with 2 tablespoons of rennet.
When the curd forms, break it down with a skimmer.
Let it stand for 2 hours.
Drain and press
Spread cheesecloth over a sieve and drain the curd onto it.
Salt and gently break the curd with your hands.
Transfer the curd into a press with a 2-pound weight on top.
After 12 hours, wrap the cheese in linen cheesecloth.
Ripen
Turn the cheese daily until dry, rubbing the outside with butter, and allow it to ripen gradually.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Forms the body of the cheese once rennet sets it into curd.
- Rennet
- Causes the milk to coagulate into curd, separating solids from liquid whey.
- Butter
- Rubbed on the outside during ripening to add fat and help the rind stay supple.
The step that matters
Breaking the curd and draining. Curd size and handling control how much whey stays in the cheese. Gentle breaking keeps the curd tender and moist, while overworking it can make the texture crumbly and drier.
“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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