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 ↓
Cottage Cheese
Ingredients
Directions
Make the curds
Heat the sour milk in a pan on the stove until it is scalding hot, stirring occasionally, and do not let it boil.
Pour the heated milk into a bag and let it drain all day.
Finish and serve
Mash the drained cheese very fine with the back of a spoon before serving.
Mix in the sweet cream and salt; add pepper if desired; if no cream, use a little milk and butter.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sour milk
- Its acidity curdles the milk proteins, separating the solid curds from the whey.
- Sweet cream
- Adds richness and a softer, moister texture to the drained curds.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the cheese when used in place of cream.
The step that matters
Do not let the milk boil when heating it. Gentle heating to scalding warms the milk enough to firm up the curds. Boiling can toughen the proteins and make the curds rubbery and 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.
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