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Dessert

Delicate Cream Cheese

A soft cheese made by curdling milk and cream with rennet, then pressing and salting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delicate Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Warm the milk slightly and add the cream.

  2. Add just enough rennet to curdle the mixture.

  3. Once curdled, cut the curd and fill a mold lined with a cloth.

Press and salt

  1. Press gently to remove whey.

  2. Add more curd as it settles.

  3. Turn the cheese into a dry cloth.

  4. Press with a weight of no more than 2 pounds.

  5. The next morning, sprinkle lightly with fine salt.

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. 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

New milk
Forms the main body of the cheese as its proteins set into curd.
Cream
Adds fat, making the cheese richer and softer in texture.
Rennet
Causes the milk to curdle, separating solid curd from liquid whey.

The step that matters

Add just enough rennet to curdle the mixture. Too much rennet can make the curd bitter and weak, while too little leaves the milk unset. Measuring carefully gives a firm, clean curd that holds its shape when cut.

“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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