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Dessert

Cottage Cheese

Cottage cheese is made by separating curds from whey of clabbered milk, then draining and mixing with salt, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Cottage Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Heat the can of clabbered milk slowly on the back of the stove until the curd separates from the whey. Do not let it become hot.

  2. Alternatively, pour hot water over the clabbered milk.

  3. Drain the mixture through a cloth bag until dry.

Finish

  1. Stir in salt butter and sweet or slightly sour cream.

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

Clabbered milk
Its curds form the body of the cottage cheese once separated from the whey.
Sweet or slightly sour cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the dry curd and adding a mild tang.
Salt butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the clabbered milk slowly. Gentle heat lets the curd separate from the whey while staying soft. If it becomes hot, the curd tightens and turns tough and rubbery, so the cheese is dry and crumbly.

“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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