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Potted Cheese

A cheese mixture flavored with butter, spices, sugar, vinegar, and salt, pressed into a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potted Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scrape and pound the cheese with the butter.

  2. Add cayenne pepper, pounded mace, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

  3. Mix until well combined.

  4. Press the mixture into a potting jar to shape.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Cheese
Forms the body of the spread and gives it its main savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, spreadable texture once pounded.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and cuts the richness of the cheese and butter.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and the heat of the cayenne.

The step that matters

Mix until well combined. Cheese, butter, and seasonings must be evenly blended. Pockets of unmixed cayenne, mace, or vinegar make some bites much hotter or sharper than others, and the paste may look grainy or separated.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, pepper, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, pepper, sugar, vinegar. 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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