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How to Make Cottage Cheese

A homemade cottage cheese made by curdling skimmed milk with buttermilk and junket tablet, then draining and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and junket share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

How to Make Cottage Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curd

  1. Dissolve the junket tablet in 2 tablespoons of water.

  2. Stir together the milk, buttermilk, and dissolved junket tablet.

  3. Warm the mixture to 75°F (24°C) by placing the container in warm water.

  4. Set aside overnight.

Drain and season

  1. In the morning, pour the curd onto a piece of heavy muslin without breaking it too much.

  2. Drain until it reaches the desired consistency, using an improvised press if needed.

  3. Season with cream and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Buttermilk + junkettop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Junket + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Milk + junkettop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Skimmed milk
Forms the body of the cheese as its proteins set into curd.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity that helps the milk begin to thicken and curdle.
Junket tablet
Rennet-style enzyme that sets the milk into a soft curd.

The step that matters

Pouring the curd onto muslin. Handling the set curd gently keeps it in soft, tender pieces. Breaking it too much releases more whey and cloudier curds, which can leave the cheese grainy or dry.

“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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