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Dessert

Cold Cheese Creams

Cold cheese creams are chilled mixtures of grated cheese, cream, aspic jelly, gelatin, and seasonings, served in moulds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 207 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Cold Cheese Creams

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moulds

  1. Decorate small moulds with aspic jelly, chili, and chervil or truffle.

Make the cheese cream

  1. Half whip the cream.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in the aspic jelly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a basin and whip to a froth.

  4. Stir the cheese into the cream.

  5. When the whipped jelly is cold but not setting, add it with the seasoning to the cream.

  6. Fill the decorated moulds with the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Once set, turn out onto a dish and garnish with chopped aspic.

  2. Optionally, place the mixture into little paper cases and decorate with chopped truffle or parsley.

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. Mustard + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Cream + cherviltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Parmesan cheese
Provides rich savoury flavour and firmness to the set cream.
Cream
Whipped to add lightness and a soft, airy texture.
Aspic jelly
Sets the mixture and gives it a firm, sliceable body.
Gelatine
Helps the aspic and cream hold their shape once chilled.

The step that matters

Whipping the jelly at the right temperature. If the whipped jelly is too warm it will not hold its air, and if it has already begun to set it will not blend evenly into the cream. Waiting until it is cold but still liquid lets it fold in smoothly and keeps the mousse light.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parmesan cheese, cream, pepper, mustard):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parmesan cheese, cream, pepper, mustard. 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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