Name: Cheese Ramekins
Ingredients: ¼ pound soft cheese; 1 cup soft bread crumbs; 2 cups milk; ½ teaspoon salt; a pinch of paprika

Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Ramekins

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Grate the soft cheese.
In a saucepan, combine the grated cheese, bread crumbs, milk, salt, and paprika.
Cook over medium heat, stirring until the mixture is smooth and heated through.

Bake and serve

Pour into ramekins and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.
Serve warm.

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.

Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Soft cheese: Melts into the milk mixture to give the custard its rich flavor and creamy body.
Soft bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture, giving it a tender, set texture when baked.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that sets into a soft custard as the eggs and starches firm.

“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.