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Dessert

Cheese Nuts

A baked snack of almonds or walnuts, cheese, bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Blanch and slightly toast almonds if using them.

  2. In a baking pan, layer chopped nuts, grated cheese, and grated bread crumbs alternately.

  3. Season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Soften the mixture with boiling water.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds or english walnuts
Provide crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour that carries the dish.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and, as it melts and browns, a golden crust.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and butter, giving the mixture body and a lighter texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumbs and cheese brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Soften the mixture with boiling water. Too little water leaves the crumbs dry and gritty, while too much makes the mixture soggy and slow to brown. The water hydrates the bread crumbs so they bind with the cheese and fat.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, bread, butter, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, bread, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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