Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cream Cheese. No. 2
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the milk
Boil water in a kettle.
Combine 5 quarts of new milk with 5 pints of cold water and 5 pints of hot water in a pan.
When at the right temperature, add rennet and sugar.
Set and form the curd
After 20 minutes, stir the curd with a skimmer 3-4 times.
After 1-2 hours, ladle the curd into a vat without touching it.
Place a 1-pound weight on top once the whey has drained and the vat is full.
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.
-
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- New milk
- Supplies the milk proteins and fat that clot into the curd and form the cheese body.
- Rennet
- Enzyme that clots the milk proteins into a firm curd that can be separated from the whey.
The step that matters
Ladling the curd without touching it. The set curd is fragile and clumps easily. Disturbing it before it has firmed can break it into small pieces that trap whey and lose the gel structure, so it should be moved gently.
“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 cream cheese recipes
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.