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Dessert

Cottage Cheese Tart

A tart filled with a mixture of cottage cheese, milk, whipped cream, and egg white, topped with fruit and optional powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the filling

  1. Soften the cottage cheese with the milk.

  2. Add half of the whipped cream and the delicate flavoring.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg white gently.

Fill and garnish

  1. Heap the mixture into pre-cooked, browned pastry cases.

  2. Garnish the top with the remaining whipped cream and fresh or canned fruit if desired.

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. Milk + lemontop 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.
Milk
Softens the cottage cheese so it blends smoothly.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and richness to the filling and the topping.
Egg white
Adds air and lightness to the filling when folded in.
Pie crust
Forms the pastry case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white gently. The egg white holds air beaten into it, which gives the filling its lightness. Gentle folding keeps that air in, while vigorous stirring deflates the foam and leaves the filling dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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