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Potted Cheese

A cheese preserved in butter, stored in a pot, served spread on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potted Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the rind of the cheese clean and grate it.

  2. In a mortar, beat the grated cheese with ½ cup of butter until well mixed.

Store

  1. Transfer the mixture into a pot and cover it with a piece of clean bladder.

  2. Store in a cool place; it will keep for several months.

Serve

  1. Serve spread on bread for breakfast or lunch, seasoned with mustard, pepper, and salt if desired.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese rind and cheese
Provides the main savoury, rich flavour and the body of the spread.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cheese mixture soft, smooth and spreadable.

The step that matters

Beating the cheese with butter until well mixed. Cheese and butter must be fully combined so the spread is smooth rather than gritty or streaky. Grated cheese is firm and tends to stay in lumps unless worked thoroughly with the softer fat.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, white pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, white pepper. 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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