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Potato Cheese

A cheese made from mashed potatoes, milk, rennet, salt, caraway, and cumin, left to ferment and dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Caraway and cumin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Potato Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curd

  1. Boil the potatoes until soft, keeping the skin intact.

  2. Peel the potatoes and mash them into a smooth paste.

  3. In a bowl, combine the potato paste, milk, rennet, salt, caraway seeds, and cumin seeds.

  4. Knead the mixture well and cover it.

  5. Let it sit for 3-4 days in winter or 2-3 days in summer.

  6. Knead again.

Mold and dry

  1. Place the mixture into wicker molds.

  2. Allow the cheeses to drain until completely dry.

Harden

  1. Once dry, place them on a board in a moderately warm area to harden.

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. Caraway + cumintop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Potato + cumintop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together972 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Potato + carawaytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  5. Milk + carawaytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the paste that holds the cheese together and gives it body.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the potato paste.
Rennet
Coagulates the milk so the mixture sets into a curd.
Caraway seeds
Contribute a distinctive aromatic flavour.
Cumin seeds
Contribute a warm, earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Draining until completely dry. If the cheese stays wet, it will not firm up properly during hardening and can spoil. Draining removes excess whey and moisture, so the curd can set into a firm, sliceable texture.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, cumin):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, cumin. 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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