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Pounded Cheese

A spreadable cheese made by pounding cheese and butter together, optionally flavored with spices or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Pounded Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cheese into thin bits.

  2. Add 2 to 3 ounces of fresh butter to the cheese.

  3. Pound and rub the cheese and butter together in a mortar until smooth.

  4. For added flavor, mix in optional spices or moisten with a glass of Sherry.

Store

  1. Press the mixture into a jar and cover with clarified butter to keep for several days in cool weather.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cheese + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheddar, cheshire, or north wiltshire cheese
Provides the main body, rich flavor, and firm paste that the butter softens into a spread.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and moisture, making the cheese smooth, soft, and easy to spread.

The step that matters

Pound and rub until smooth. Cheese and butter must be worked together thoroughly so the fat distributes evenly; uneven mixing leaves lumps of firm cheese and greasy pockets of butter, and a smooth paste spreads better.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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