Skip to main content
Main

Cottage-cheese Dressing

A creamy dressing made with cottage cheese, sour cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cottage-cheese Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour, salt, mustard, and paprika with melted butter until smooth.

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan and stir in the creamed mixture until very thick.

  3. Once the mixture boils, slowly add the vinegar while stirring continuously.

  4. Cool slightly and then beat in the egg.

Finish the dressing

  1. If necessary, pass the cottage cheese through a sieve to break up lumps.

  2. Gradually beat the cottage cheese into the dressing until smooth.

  3. Finally, fold the whipped cream into the dressing.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the dressing becomes very thick and holds its body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind and thicken the dressing once it has cooled slightly.
Cottage cheese
Provides creamy body and a mild tang that gives the dressing its main texture.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped and folded in.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar slowly while stirring. Adding acid all at once to a hot, thickened mixture can cause it to curdle or separate. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes