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Cottage-cheese Dishes

A cottage cheese dish with a white sauce made from butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cottage cheese and cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 126 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cottage-cheese Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Make the white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in milk. Cook until thickened.

  2. Cool the sauce slightly before adding it to the cottage cheese.

Combine and reheat

  1. Stir the sauce gradually into the cheese until well blended.

  2. Reheat the mixture carefully, avoiding boiling to prevent curdling.

  3. For variations, add grated American cheese, peanut butter, cayenne pepper, curry powder, onion juice, Worcestershire sauce, chopped parsley, or pimientos as 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. Cottage cheese + cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Peanut + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 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 body of the dish, providing the creamy, curd-based base.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, enriching the sauce's flavor and texture.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce when cooked with butter and milk.
Milk
Liquid that, heated with the roux, becomes the smooth white sauce.

The step that matters

Reheat the mixture carefully. Cottage cheese curds can toughen and separate when boiled. Gentle heating keeps the mixture smooth and blended.

Swap the peanut

The recipe marks peanut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, butter, flour, pepper, milk, cheese, onion):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

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