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Baked Cowpeas and Cheese

A baked roll of cowpeas mixed with cottage cheese, butter, optional onion and pepper or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cottage cheese work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Cowpeas and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Press the cowpeas through a sieve to remove the skins.

  2. Mix the cowpeas with the cottage cheese.

  3. Cook the onion and green pepper or celery in the butter over low heat, avoiding browning.

  4. Add the cooked onion and pepper or celery to the cowpea and cheese mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the mixture into a roll and place it on a buttered dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until brown, basting occasionally with butter and water.

  3. Serve hot or cold, like meat.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cottage cheese + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cowpeas
Form the bulk of the roll, giving it body and a soft, mashable structure.
Cottage cheese
Adds moisture and creaminess, helping the mixture hold together when shaped.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the outside brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion and pepper over low heat. High heat scorches the natural sugars in onion and peppers, producing bitter flavour and dark specks. Gentle cooking softens them and keeps the flavour mild and even in the mixture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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