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Dessert

Delicate Cream Cheese

A soft cheese made from milk, cream, rennet, salt, and aged with leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,130 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delicate Cream Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Warm the milk slightly and add the cream.

  2. Add just enough rennet to curdle the mixture.

  3. Once curdled, cut the curd with a skimming dish and fill a mold lined with a cloth.

  4. Cover the curd with the cloth and let it drain.

  5. As it drains, gently press and add more curd until all whey is removed.

Press and salt

  1. Transfer the curd to a dry cloth and press with a weight not exceeding 2 pounds.

  2. At night, change to a clean cloth and sprinkle lightly with fine salt the next morning.

Ripen

  1. Place the cheese on a bed of fresh leaves, cover with more leaves, and turn twice daily.

  2. Renew the leaves occasionally until the cheese ripens in less than two weeks.

  3. For quicker ripening, keep the cheese in a warm place between two pewter dishes and change the leaves daily.

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 + strawberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

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

  2. Cream + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the bulk of the curd that becomes the cheese.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the curd richer and softer in texture.
Rennet
Causes the milk proteins to set into a curd.

The step that matters

Adding the rennet. Too much rennet can make the curd firm and bitter, while too little leaves the milk from setting properly. Add just enough to curdle the mixture, then wait until it sets before cutting.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberrythe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream. 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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