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Creamy Eggs with Cottage Cheese

A creamy egg dish made with cottage cheese, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings, finished with paprika and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamy Eggs with Cottage Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, then stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  2. Gradually add the milk, salt, pepper, and baking soda, stirring until thickened, about 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the sauce over the cottage cheese and mix well.

Cook the eggs

  1. Return the mixture to a double boiler and reheat over hot water.

  2. Beat the eggs slightly, then pour them into the warm sauce, mixing well.

  3. As the mixture sets, gently scrape the sides and bottom to form soft curds.

  4. Cook until the mixture is creamy throughout, then serve garnished with paprika and parsley or pimientos.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cottage cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, forming soft curds that give the dish its body.
Cottage cheese
Adds moisture and tender, creamy texture to the custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, keeping the eggs soft and creamy.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted with the flour.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the warm sauce. Eggs set when heated, so if the mixture is too hot or cooked too fast, the proteins tighten and turn grainy or watery. Keep the heat gentle over hot water and scrape slowly for soft curds.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, pepper, egg, cottage cheese):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Dillfits about as well

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