Name: Puffs
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Why it works: Butter and parmesan cheese 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 ↓

Puffs

Ingredients

1 ounce butter
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Melt the butter in a pan.
Add the grated Parmesan cheese and stir until combined.
Cook until the mixture is heated through.
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.

Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,163 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, carrying the cheese flavor and helping the mixture stay smooth.
Parmesan cheese: Provides salty, savory flavor and melts into the butter to give the mixture body.

“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.