Name: Cottage Cheese with Cream and Sugar
Ingredients: Cottage cheese; Heavy cream; Sugar; Fresh fruits (berries, peaches, etc.) or dried fruits (raisins, dates, etc.); Brown sugar, honey, jam, or marmalade (optional); Chopped nuts (optional)

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese with Cream and Sugar

Ingredients

Cottage cheese
Heavy cream
Sugar
Fresh fruits (berries, peaches, etc.) or dried fruits (raisins, dates, etc.)
Brown sugar, honey, jam, or marmalade (optional)
Chopped nuts (optional)

Directions

In a bowl, combine cottage cheese and heavy cream.
Add sugar to taste and mix well.
Top with fresh or dried fruits, and optional ingredients like brown sugar, honey, or nuts.
Serve immediately as a breakfast or light meal.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cottage cheese + peachtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Cottage cheese + creamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together146 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together886 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, cream, sugar, peach):

Almondfits better
Walnutfits better
Beansfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, cream, sugar, peach. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.