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Cheese Sandwiches, Hot

A hot sandwich made with grated cheese, buttered bread, salt, and cayenne pepper, toasted or baked until melted.

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 Sandwiches, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sandwich

  1. Butter thin slices of bread lightly.

  2. Sprinkle generously with grated cheese.

  3. Press two slices together firmly and cut in half.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast quickly until golden.

  2. Alternatively, toast circular pieces of bread.

  3. Sprinkle with a thick layer of cheese seasoned with salt and cayenne.

  4. Place in a shallow pan and bake until cheese is melted.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Melts into a creamy, smooth filling that binds the sandwich together.
Bread
Provides the structure that holds the filling and browns when toasted.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the bread brown evenly and turn golden.

The step that matters

Toast quickly until golden. Bread browns through the Maillard reaction at high surface heat. Toasting too long dries the bread and can scorch it before the cheese melts through, so watch the colour closely.

“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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