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Cream Cheese

A soft cheese made by curdling milk with rennet and draining whey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Cream Cheese

Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Pour the milk into a pan.

  2. Add the rennet and let it sit until curd forms.

  3. Let it stand for 2 hours.

  4. Break the curd gently with a skimming dish.

  5. Line a sieve with cheesecloth and pour the curd into it to drain the whey.

  6. Break the curd slightly with your hand and transfer it to a vat.

Press and dry

  1. Place a 2‑pound weight on top and let it sit for 12 hours.

  2. Remove the curd and wrap it with a cloth.

  3. Turn the cheese daily until dry, covering it with nettles or clean dock leaves.

Ripen

  1. Place between two pewter plates to ripen for about 3 weeks if the weather is warm.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the bulk of the cheese, with its proteins setting into the curd.
Rennet
Enzyme that coagulates the milk into a soft curd for draining.

“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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