Skip to main content
Main

Potato Cheese

A cheese made from potato paste, milk, rennet, caraway seeds, mace, butter, and chickweed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese

  1. Mix potato paste, milk, and rennet in a bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a cheese basket or mold and let it sit for 3-4 days.

Layer and dry

  1. Once set, sprinkle a layer of pounded caraway seeds and beaten mace on top.

  2. Spread ¼ cup of fresh butter over the layer.

  3. Add another layer of the cheese mixture and repeat the process until the mold is full.

  4. Let the cheese dry gradually on a board, avoiding direct sunlight or oven heat.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Potato + carawaytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato paste
Forms the bulk of the cheese, giving body to the curd.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that rennet sets into curd.
Rennet
Coagulates the milk so it sets into a firm, sliceable curd.
Fresh butter
Adds fat, richness and a smooth, moist texture to the layers.

The step that matters

Letting the cheese dry gradually. Drying slowly at cool room conditions lets moisture leave evenly and firms the cheese without hardening the surface. Direct sunlight or oven heat can melt the butter, crack the surface, and dry it unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, caraway, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, caraway, butter. 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.

More potato cheese recipes

Cakes 13 See all 10 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes