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Dessert

Cheese Straws and Biscuits

A baked snack of cheese straws and biscuits made with butter, cheese, flour, spices, egg yolk, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Straws and Biscuits

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter and cheese until smooth.

  2. Add cayenne pepper, dry mustard, and salt; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour and mix until a cookie dough forms.

  4. Stir in the egg yolk and milk until combined.

  5. Chill the dough in a cold place until firm.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into strips about 3-4 inches long and pencil-thick.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the dough turn tender and short when baked.
Cheese
Supplies savory flavor and fat, and helps the straws brown as they bake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that holds the dough together and gives the straws their body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and binds the dough, helping it hold together when shaped.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour hydrates and the dough comes together smoothly.

The step that matters

Chill the dough until firm. Chilling firms the butter so the strips hold their shape and spread less in the oven. Skipping it can leave soft dough that is hard to roll and bakes flat.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, flour, pepper, egg, milk. 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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