Why it works: Flour and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,860 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Make the dough
In a bowl, mix the flour and grated cheese.
Add the lard and mix until a paste forms.
Roll out the paste to a thick sheet.
Cut and bake
Cut the sheet into strips, each half an inch wide and five to six inches long.
Place the strips on a baking sheet and bake until light brown.
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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Flour + cheesetop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,860 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the main structure that holds the paste and strips together.
- Grated cheese
- Adds savory flavor and helps the straws brown as they bake.
- Lard
- Adds fat that makes the paste short and tender and helps it brown.
The step that matters
Bake until light brown. Baking only until light brown keeps the straws crisp and prevents the cheese and fat from scorching. Strips of this thinness can darken quickly, so watch them closely near the end of baking.
“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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