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Cheese

A simple cheese made from milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, salt, and a junket tablet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cheese

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curds

  1. Warm the milk in a saucepan until it is just above body temperature.

  2. Dissolve the junket tablet in a small amount of water and add it to the milk.

  3. Stir in the sugar, vanilla, and salt.

  4. Let the mixture sit undisturbed until it separates into curds and whey.

Drain and store

  1. Drain the curds and press them to remove excess whey.

  2. Add salt to the curds to prevent spoiling.

  3. Keep the cheese in a cool place until served.

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.

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.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Junket + sugartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Junket + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the base that rennet coagulates into soft curds.
Junket tablet
Contains rennet, which sets the milk into curds and whey.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the curds.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, savoury flavour of the curds.

The step that matters

Let the mixture sit undisturbed. Moving the milk while the rennet sets can break the forming curd into small, weak pieces, so the cheese turns out grainy and loses its soft, even set.

“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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