Skip to main content
Dessert

Rush Cream Cheese

A cheese made by curdling fresh cream and milk with rennet, then ripened in a straw vat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 milk until it is just warm enough to mix with the cream.

  2. Combine the cream, warm milk, sugar, and rennet in a bowl.

  3. Set the mixture near a warm place until the curd forms.

Shape and ripen

  1. Prepare a vat using wheat straw or rushes sewn together, shaped like a brick. Place a flat square of straw or rushes underneath the vat and cover it with another square. The vat should be open at the top and bottom.

  2. The next day, remove the cheese and repeat the process to ripen it. Place a half-pound weight on top to help with the ripening.

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
Provides the fat that gives the cheese its rich, smooth body.
New milk
Supplies the protein and liquid that set into the curd.
Rennet
Enzyme that coagulates the milk so the curd forms.

The step that matters

Set the mixture near a warm place until the curd forms. Rennet works best at a warm, steady temperature. If the mixture gets too cold, it sets slowly or not at all, and if too hot, the curd can become weak or grainy.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes