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Baked Cowpeas and Cheese

A baked dish of cowpeas mixed with cottage cheese, onions, and green pepper or celery, seasoned with butter and optional baking soda.

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, being careful not to brown.

  4. Add the cooked onion and pepper to the cowpeas and cheese mixture.

Bake and serve

  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, starchy structure once mashed.
Cottage cheese
Adds moisture and creaminess, and helps bind the pressed cowpeas into a shapeable mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the outside brown while basting.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion and pepper over low heat without browning. Gentle heat softens the vegetables and sweetens them while keeping their flavor mild. Browning them would add bitterness and a stronger taste to the delicate cowpea and cheese mixture.

Swap the onion

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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