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Dessert

Curds and Cream

A dessert of milk curds served with cream, sugar, wine, lemon juice, and optional raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Curds and Cream

Why it works: Lemon and raspberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Curds and Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Turn the milk as for cheesecakes until the curd becomes firm.

  2. Drop the curd into a mould with holes, adding more as the whey runs off.

  3. If you prefer a firmer curd, press it down; otherwise, leave it light.

Set and serve

  1. Let it remain in the mould for about 2 hours.

  2. Turn it out into a glass dish or bowl.

  3. Serve with cream, sugar, white wine, lemon juice, or raspberry jam.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White wine + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Its proteins coagulate into the curd that forms the body of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty contrast to the light curd.
White wine
Adds acidity and a bright, fruity note to the serving sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the dish.

The step that matters

Leave the curd light unless you want it firmer. Pressing the curd expels more whey and makes it denser and drier. Pressing or not pressing changes the final texture, so decide before you start.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, white wine, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberrythe original
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Orangefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, sugar, white wine, lemon. 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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