Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cheese Cream Toast
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 toast
Toast the stale bread slices.
Cover the toast with grated cheese.
Make the cream sauce
In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.
Mix the flour with a little cold water, then stir it into the boiling milk.
Cook the mixture until it thickens, then season with salt and butter.
Bake and serve
Place the toast and cheese in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 3-4 minutes.
Pour the cream over the toast and cheese before serving.
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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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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
- Stale bread
- Provides a dry, sturdy base that holds the cheese and sauce.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
- Plain flour
- Its starch swells as it heats, thickening the milk into a smooth sauce.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Thickening the sauce. Flour added straight into boiling milk clumps before its starch can disperse. Mixing it with cold water first makes a smooth slurry, so the starch thickens the milk evenly.
“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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