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, to Make
Ingredients
Directions
Make the curd
Heat the milk and cream until lukewarm.
Add rennet as you would for other cheeses.
Press the curd in the usual manner.
Turn the curd
Place the curd into a cheese vat and turn it over four or five times a day into clean cloths.
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.
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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
- Milk
- Its proteins form the curd that becomes the body of the cheese.
- Cream
- Adds fat for a richer, softer, creamier texture in the finished cheese.
- Rennet
- Enzyme that sets the warm milk into a solid curd, separating it from the whey.
The step that matters
Heat the milk and cream until lukewarm. Rennet works best at a gentle warmth; if the milk is too hot, the enzyme is damaged and the curd may set poorly or not at all, while milk that is too cool sets slowly and weakly.
“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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