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Dessert

Cheese Straws, or Cheese Biscuits

Cheese straws are thin, baked strips of grated cheese, flour, butter, lard, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,163 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cheese Straws, or Cheese Biscuits

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 the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the grated cheese with the flour.

  3. Rub in the butter and lard, then add salt and cayenne to taste.

  4. Roll out the mixture very thin.

Cut and bake

  1. Cut into narrow strips about a finger long for cheese straws, or use a pastry cutter for cheese biscuits.

  2. Bake in the hot oven for 10 minutes until golden and curled.

Serve

  1. Serve the straws in little bundles tied with ribbon.

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. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parmesan cheese + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,944 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Parmesan cheese
Provides savoury flavour and helps the straws brown and crisp in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it can be rolled thin and hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing flavour and a tender, crumbly texture.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens the dough, giving a short, crisp texture.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly into crisp straws, while thick dough stays soft and doughy in the middle before the outside over-browns.

“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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