Vintage Cooking Adventures with Miss MonMon

It’s once again the season of love and to celebrate Valentine’s Day for another year, I wanted to try another vintage recipe. Much like today, food has trends with what’s popular as well as what is considered a superfood. Remember kale becoming the latest and greatest superfood a few years back? Well, in the 50s and 60s, the reigning champion of superfoods was cottage cheese. Hailed for its protein-packed nutrients, it’s versatility and it’s relative cheapness, cottage cheese was in a lot of cuisines. As with many of the vintage recipes we have tested over the years, the trifecta of vintage cuisine is between gelatine, mayonnaise and marshmallows. Keeping with tradition, today’s vintage recipe adventure will be featuring gelatine as we will be making a Valentine’s Coeur A La Creme from the 1960s recipe pamphlet, Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese.

In order to get the US public to consume more of the superfood cottage cheese, pamphlets and mini recipe books such as ‘Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese’ were released to help households find ways to incorporate more cottage cheese into their diets. Browsing the pamphlets today is cringy, and gut-churning but interesting. On the front cover of the pamphlet, there was a heart-shaped creation which after a bit of research I found out that it was in fact the Coeur a la Creme which is a chilled creamy mixture served with fresh strawberry sauce. Although it’s not an official Valentine’s recipe, it’s served in a heart-shaped mould which is close enough for me.

Ingredients
4 cups cottage cheese, sieved
2 cups dairy sour cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup milk
Fresh Strawberry sauce (recipe below)

Method
Beat cottage cheese, sour cream and salt until smooth.
Sprinkle gelatin on milk to soften; stir over hot water until dissolved and blend into cottage cheese mixture.
Spoon into mould which has been rinsed with cold water.
Chill until firm in the refrigerator.
Serve with fresh strawberry sauce.

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Ingredients for Fresh Strawberry Sauce
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 pint of fresh strawberries
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind

Method for Fresh Strawberry Sauce
Into a small saucepan sift together sugar and cornstarch. Stir in orange and lemon juice and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. Remove from heat.
Reserve a few strawberries for garnish. Dice remainder, stir diced strawberries and lemon rind into sauce.
Chill and serve.

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Thoughts: I’m Eastern European which means that I am quite used to the combination of cottage cheese and jam so this dessert just feels like a more elevated version of that. I found the cottage cheese heart to be smooth, creamy and with a slightly sour tang which was met perfectly by the sweetness and sharpness of the fresh strawberry sauce. The strawberry sauce recipe for this dessert is delicious and I’ve made it twice since the original making of this vintage cooking adventure. It’s one to save and I’ve gone ahead and written it out here for you. I really enjoyed this dessert and ate my way through most of it (I live alone now and don’t eat a lot anymore).

This is a recipe I would make for myself again and I’m already wondering how it would go with a variation of fruit sauce toppings such as blueberry or even a mixed berry. I can see why this dessert was popular and still is around today. This is a unique idea for a vintage dinner party but I’d love to even try lightly freezing the cottage cheese heart as it might give it a slight ice cream vibe to the dish.

Note: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions and thoughts expressed are solely my own and not influenced in any way. There are no affiliate links and I do not benefit from any link clicks or purchases made.