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Cheese Dreams

A toasted sandwich with American cheese, seasoned with salt and cayenne, cooked in butter until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Dreams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut bakers bread into thick squares.

  2. Place a thick slice of American cheese between each square.

  3. Dust with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. In a hot chafing dish, melt 1 tablespoon of butter until bubbling.

  2. Add two or three sandwiches to the dish.

  3. Cook until the bread is browned and the cheese is melted.

  4. Serve on hot dishes.

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

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

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 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

Bakers bread
Forms the structure and crisp, browned outer crust of the sandwich.
American cheese
Melts into a soft, gooey filling that binds the sandwich together.
Butter
Conducts heat into the bread and browns its surface through milk solids.

The step that matters

Cook until the bread is browned and the cheese is melted. Heat must be moderate so the bread browns evenly before the cheese is fully melted. Too much heat scorches the crust while the centre stays cold and unmelted.

“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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