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Dutch Cream Cheese

A cheese made by curdling boiling milk with buttermilk and eggs, then pressing for 24 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dutch Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Beat the yolks of 8 eggs and the whites of 3 eggs.

  2. Mix the eggs with 1 pint of buttermilk.

  3. Add this mixture to 3 quarts of boiling milk.

  4. Let it boil once, then remove from heat and cover.

  5. Allow it to stand until the curd forms.

Drain and serve

  1. Pour the curd into a small sieve and press with a weight for 24 hours.

  2. Turn it out and serve with cream and sugar.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttermilktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

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

  3. Buttermilk + milktop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the curd set smooth and tender.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the curd set and hold its shape.
Buttermilk
Its acidity curdles the hot milk so the curd separates from the whey.
Milk
Forms the bulk of the curd once the acid causes it to coagulate.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and buttermilk mixture to boiling milk. Acid from the buttermilk must meet the hot milk to coagulate its proteins. Adding the mixture too slowly or to milk that is not hot enough can leave the curd weak or grainy, while the eggs can scramble if the mixture is added without stirring.

“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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