Name: Cottage Cheese with Cream and Sugar
Ingredients: Cottage cheese; Heavy cream; Sugar; Fresh fruits (berries, peaches, etc.); Dried fruits (raisins, cut dates, etc.); Brown sugar; Honey; Jam or marmalade; Chopped nuts

Why it works: Peach and honey work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 177 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese with Cream and Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine cottage cheese with heavy cream and sugar to taste.
Add your choice of fresh or dried fruits, brown sugar, honey, jam, or chopped nuts.
Serve chilled as a breakfast or supper dish.

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.

Peach + honeytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together177 recipes

Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Raisin + datestop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together358 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese: Provides the creamy, mild base that the other toppings sit on.
Heavy cream: Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the cottage cheese.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the tangy, mild flavour of the cottage cheese.
Fresh or dried fruits: Add natural sweetness, juiciness or chewiness and a contrasting texture.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, cream, sugar, peach, raisin, honey, nuts):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Pineapplefits better
Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, cream, sugar, peach, raisin, honey, nuts. 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.