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Creamy Eggs with Cottage Cheese

A creamy egg dish cooked with cottage cheese, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamy Eggs with Cottage Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.

Combine the cheese

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and mix it into the cottage cheese.

  2. Combine the cheese and sauce until well blended, then return to a double boiler over hot water to reheat.

Cook the eggs

  1. Beat the eggs slightly and pour them into the warm sauce, mixing well.

  2. As the mixture sets, gently scrape it up to form large soft curds.

  3. Cook until creamy throughout.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + cottage cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set when heated, forming the soft curds and body of the dish.
Cottage cheese
Adds moisture, creaminess and soft curd texture to the scrambled eggs.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce that holds the mixture together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, keeping the eggs tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base sauce and carries flavour.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cottage cheese, which softens its curds and makes it blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Gently scrape the mixture as it sets. Eggs turn rubbery when overcooked or stirred hard. Slow, gentle scraping over gentle heat keeps the curds large and soft, while overheating tightens the proteins and makes them dry.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Dillfits about as well

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