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Sage, or Marigold Cheese

A cheese made by curdling milk with sage or marigold, then aged for weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sage, or Marigold Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Bruise the young tops of red sage or marigold flowers in a mortar.

  2. Squeeze the juice into the milk along with the rennet until the desired color and flavor are achieved.

Make the curd

  1. Take the last quart of milk from each cow and enrich it with cream.

  2. Stir in the rennet while the milk is still warm.

  3. Once the curd forms, break it slightly with a skimming dish.

  4. Spread a cheese cloth on a sieve and lay the curd on it, breaking it a little with your hand.

  5. Place the curd in a vat with a two-pound weight on top.

  6. After 12 hours, remove the curd and bind it with a fillet.

Dry and ripen

  1. Turn the cheese daily on a clean board with fresh nettles or dock leaves until dry.

  2. If the weather is warm, it will be ready in three weeks.

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

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

  2. Milk + sagetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cream + sagetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the body of the cheese, which sets into curd once rennet is added.
Rennet
Coagulates the milk proteins so they set into a curd that can be separated from the whey.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the cheese richer and softer in texture.
Red sage or marigold flowers
Adds flavor and color to the milk, as the record directs.

The step that matters

Stir in the rennet while the milk is still warm. Rennet works best at body temperature. Milk that is too cold sets slowly or poorly, and milk that is too hot can damage the enzyme, so the curd may fail to form firmly.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Macefits better
  4. Sagethe original

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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