Name: To Make Sage Cheese
Ingredients: tops of sage; leaves of spinach; rennet; milk; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Sage and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Make Sage Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Press the juice from the sage tops and spinach leaves using a mortar.
Mix the two juices together.
Add rennet to the milk, then pour in some of the juice, adjusting for color and taste.
When curd forms, gently break it evenly.
Transfer the curd to a cheese vat and press it slightly to achieve a mellow texture.
Let it stand for about seven hours, then salt and turn it daily for four to five weeks until ready to eat.

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.

Sage + spinachtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together103 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Spinach + milktop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together914 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Sage + milktop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together719 recipes

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