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Rush Cream Cheese

A cheese made by curdling fresh cream and milk with rennet, then set in a rush-lined vat and left to ripen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rush Cream Cheese

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rush Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Warm the new milk until it is just right for the cream.

  2. Combine the warm milk, cream, sugar, and rennet.

  3. Set the mixture near the fire until the curd forms.

Press and ripen

  1. Fill a vat made of wheat-straw or rushes with the curd.

  2. Cover the vat with a square of straw or rushes.

  3. Let the vat sit overnight.

  4. Remove the cheese from the vat.

  5. Place a half-pound weight on top and let it ripen.

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

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh cream
Adds fat, which gives the cheese a rich, soft texture.
New milk
Provides the liquid and milk proteins that form the curd with rennet.
Rennet
Enzyme that coagulates the milk into a soft curd that can be shaped.

The step that matters

Set the mixture near the fire until the curd forms. Rennet needs warm, steady temperature to coagulate milk properly. Too cold and the curd forms slowly or not at all; too hot and the proteins can toughen or the mixture can scorch.

“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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