Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cheese Straws
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the dough
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix the grated cheese, flour, butter or lard, and salt until it resembles pie crust.
Roll out the mixture to a thickness of about ½ inch.
Cut the rolled dough into strips that are ½ inch wide and 6 inches long.
Bake and serve
Place the strips on a baking sheet and bake until light brown.
Serve by piling the straws in a log cabin shape on a white napkin.
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.
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cheese + flourtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,860 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
- Grated cheese
- Provides rich flavor and fat, and helps the dough brown as it bakes.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dough so the straws hold their shape.
- Butter or lard
- Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and makes it crumbly rather than tough.
The step that matters
Mixing until it resembles pie crust. Working the fat into the flour in small pieces, without overworking, keeps the straws short and tender. Overmixing develops gluten and makes them tough.
“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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