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Cottage Cheese Tart

A chilled tart made with cottage cheese, lemon, egg whites, cream, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese Tart

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine cottage cheese and lemon juice.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites and lemon rind.

  3. Gently mix in the whipped cream.

  4. Add sweet milk and sugar, adjusting sweetness to taste.

  5. Pour the mixture into a tart shell and chill before serving.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cottage cheese + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Cottage cheese + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Forms the creamy body of the filling.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they add lightness and help the filling set airy.
Heavy cream
Whipped, it adds richness and a soft, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and firms the cottage cheese.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites and whipped cream gently. Deflating the foam by stirring hard knocks out the air trapped in the beaten whites and whipped cream, which gives the tart its light texture. Gentle folding keeps that air in place.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, egg, cream, milk, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, egg, cream, milk, sugar. 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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