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Pot Cheese

A cheese and macaroni dish made by boiling macaroni and mixing with a curdled milk cheese sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pot Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Scald the sour milk until it curdles, then strain off the whey.

  2. Form the curd into round cakes about 1 inch thick, adding salt to taste.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, boil the macaroni in water for 20 minutes until tender.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the milk, flour, butter, cream, mustard, salt, pepper, cayenne, and grated cheese.

  3. Stir the mixture and boil for 10 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the macaroni and pour the cheese mixture over it.

  2. Boil for an additional 5 to 6 minutes and serve.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Curdles to form the curd, which is the base of the dish.
Macaroni
Provides the starchy body that the cheese sauce coats.
Milk
Makes up the liquid of the sauce, keeping it smooth and pourable.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the macaroni.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Grated fat cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding savoriness and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce after adding the cheese. Once the cheese is stirred into the hot milk and flour mixture, it can turn grainy or separate if the heat is too high. Keep the boil gentle and stir often so the sauce stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, cream, pepper, cheese. 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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