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Dessert

Cheese Custard

A custard made with cottage cheese, flour, eggs, sugar, milk, and cream, baked over a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheese Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine cottage cheese, flour, egg yolks, sugar, salt, and sweet cream in a bowl and beat lightly.

  2. Add milk and nutmeg, mixing until smooth.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture onto a crust.

  2. Bake.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cottage cheese + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cottage cheese
Forms the body of the custard and gives it a rich, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set as it cooks.
Egg whites
Beaten to a froth, they lighten the custard and add rise.
Flour
Thickens the custard and helps it hold its shape when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly at the surface.
Milk
Adds liquid that gives the custard a soft, smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are stiff. Folding gently keeps that air in the mixture, so the custard stays light instead of deflating before and during baking.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, flour, egg, sugar, cream, milk):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, flour, egg, sugar, cream, milk. 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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