Skip to main content
Main

Cottage-Cheese Sauces

A sauce made by blending cottage cheese with a roux of butter, flour, baking soda, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cheese

  1. Dissolve baking soda in a little milk or hot water.

  2. Blend the dissolved soda with the cottage cheese.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook for 1 minute.

  4. Gradually whisk in milk.

  5. Cook until thickened.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Cool slightly before mixing with cheese.

  8. Stir until well blended.

  9. Reheat carefully.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cottage cheese + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Cottage cheese
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a creamy, tangy flavor.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cheese, helping it blend smoothly instead of staying grainy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the heated liquid.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that loosens the sauce to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Gradually whisk in the milk. Adding milk slowly while whisking lets the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Flour starch swells as the mixture heats, so the sauce thickens smoothly only when it is kept moving.

“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