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Dessert

Cottage Cheese Tartlets

A baked tartlet filled with a mixture of cottage cheese, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, lemon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pass the cottage cheese through a sieve to remove lumps.

  2. Add sugar, salt, melted butter, lemon juice, and lemon extract to the cheese and mix well.

  3. Beat the egg yolks, add milk, and incorporate into the cheese mixture.

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Line small patty pans with pastry and fill them three-fourths full.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Cottage cheese + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Forms the creamy, tender body of the filling.
Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the filling and yolks help it set when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tang of the cheese and lemon.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smooth, tender filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mixture for a silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the cheese filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites are stiff and full of trapped air; folding gently keeps that air in the mixture so the tartlets rise and stay light rather than deflating. Overmixing knocks the air out and makes the filling dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, milk, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, milk, sugar, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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