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Cottage-cheese Dressing

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 dry ingredients together and cream them with the melted butter.

  2. Add the creamed mixture to the heated milk and stir until very thick.

  3. After the mixture has boiled, slowly add vinegar while stirring continuously.

  4. Cool slightly and add the beaten egg.

Add the cheese and cream

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

  2. Using an egg beater, gradually beat the cottage cheese into the dressing until smooth.

  3. Lastly, 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 as its starch swells and sets when heated with the liquid.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth, creamy base.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind and thicken the dressing as it sets.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and tang that balances the richness of the dairy.
Cottage cheese
Adds body and a creamy texture once broken up and beaten smooth.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a light texture when whipped and folded in.

The step that matters

Cool slightly before adding the egg. Adding a beaten egg to a very hot mixture can scramble it into lumps. Cooling it slightly lets the egg blend in smoothly and thicken gently without curdling.

Swap the mustard

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

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