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Dessert

Cheese Aetificial

A sweet cheese made from milk, cream, eggs, vinegar, spices, sugar, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheese Aetificial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curds

  1. Grate nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon.

  2. In a large pot, combine the milk and cream, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the grated spices and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Whisk the eggs and stir them into the boiling mixture.

  5. Add the wine vinegar to curdle the milk and let it boil until curds form.

  6. Strain the curds through cheesecloth and let it hang for 6 to 8 hours to drain.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the spices, sweeten with sugar and rose water, and place in a colander.

  2. Let it sit for an additional hour, then turn it out onto a dish.

  3. Serve with cream underneath.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the body of the curds once it is curdled by the vinegar.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished cheese a softer, smoother texture.
Eggs
Add protein that sets and firms the curds as the mixture boils.
Wine vinegar
Acid that curdles the milk, separating the curds from the whey.

The step that matters

Adding the wine vinegar. Acid must be added to the boiling milk and cream so the proteins coagulate into curds. Adding too little leaves the milk uncurdled, while the curds need to be strained and drained to set into a firm cheese.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, egg, wine, vinegar, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, wine, vinegar, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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