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Dessert

Curds and Cream

A cheese made by curdling milk with rennet, draining whey, and mixing cream and nutmeg, then sweetened and decorated with colored comfits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Curds and Cream

Why it works: Cream and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,920 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Curds and Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Heat 2 quarts of milk until just warm.

  2. Add ½ tablespoon of rennet and stir gently.

  3. Let it sit for 1-2 hours until curds form.

  4. Drain off the whey and place the curd in a mold.

Finish and serve

  1. Turn out the curd and sprinkle with colored comfits.

  2. Sweeten the cream and mix in grated nutmeg.

  3. Pour the sweetened cream around the curd.

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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. 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

Milk
Forms the curd when set with rennet, becoming the body of the dish.
Rennet
Coagulates the milk proteins, causing the milk to set into curds and whey.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture around the curd.

The step that matters

Let the curd set undisturbed. Rennet needs time and stillness to form a firm curd; stirring or moving the milk too early can break the forming network and yield a grainy, loose result.

“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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