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Stilton Cheese

A traditional English blue cheese made from milk, cream, rennet, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Stilton Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Pour 12 pints of sweet cream into a small tub.

  2. Add a kettleful of boiling water and stir until well mixed.

  3. Combine this mixture with 15 gallons of warm milk in the cheese-tub.

  4. When the mixture reaches 90°F (32°C), add the rennet.

Form the curd

  1. Once it has coagulated, break the curd slightly.

  2. Cover with a thin cloth and drain off the whey.

  3. Place the curd in a bag or net and let it hang until it stops dripping.

Cut, rest and salt

  1. Cut the curd into pieces and submerge in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. As you remove the pieces, sprinkle with coarse sea salt and place them into the vat.

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

Milk
Forms the bulk of the cheese, and its proteins set into the curd once rennet is added.
Sweet cream
Adds fat, which makes the curd richer and softer in texture.
Rennet
Enzyme that coagulates the milk proteins so the curd can separate from the whey.

The step that matters

Adding the rennet at 90°F (32°C). Rennet works within a narrow temperature range. If the milk is too cold, coagulation is slow and weak; if it is too hot, the enzyme can be damaged and the curd may be poor. Hitting the stated temperature gives a firm, even set.

“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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