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 ↓
Cottage Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Make the curd
Place the pan of clabbered sour milk over the fire and scald well.
Pour the milk into a clean cloth and squeeze out all the water until dry.
Put the dry clabber into a basin and work it with your hands.
Season and shape
Moisten the mixture with a little cream and butter, and add plenty of salt.
Mold the mixture into little balls.
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.
-
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Clabbered sour milk
- Its curds form the body of the cheese once the whey is pressed out.
- Cream
- Adds moisture and richness, softening the dry curd.
- Butter
- Adds fat, giving the curd a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Squeezing out the water until dry. Any whey left in the curd keeps it wet and loose, so it will not hold its shape when molded. Pressing it fully dry gives a firm, crumbly base that the cream and butter can then moisten evenly.
“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.
More cottage cheese recipes
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.