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New Jersey Cream Cheese

A cheese made by curdling milk with rennet, salting, draining, pressing, and ripening with sweet grass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and grass work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

New Jersey Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Scald the desired quantity of milk and let it cool slightly.

  2. Add rennet according to package directions.

  3. Once curd forms, gently remove it with a ladle.

  4. Place the curd on a thin cloth held by two people.

  5. Dash water over the curd to separate it.

  6. Hang the curd to drain.

Press and salt

  1. Press the curd for 1 hour.

  2. Cut the curd into small pieces with a thread.

  3. Place a cloth between every two pieces.

  4. Press the curd again for 1 hour.

  5. Rub the curd with fine salt.

  6. Let the salted curd sit on a board for 1 hour.

  7. Wash the curd in cold water.

  8. Let the curd drain.

Ripen

  1. After a day or two, when the skin looks dry, place sweet grass under and over the curd to ripen.

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 + grasstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd that becomes the body of the cheese.
Rennet
Causes the milk to set into a curd by coagulating its proteins.
Fine salt
Seasons the curd and helps draw out moisture and firm its surface.
Sweet grass
Adds aroma as the cheese ripens against it.

The step that matters

Removing and separating the curd. Lifting the curd gently keeps it from breaking into fine particles that drain poorly and yield a grainy, dry cheese. Dashing water over it separates the pieces so they drain cleanly.

“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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