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Escalloped Cheese

A baked dish of grated cheese layered with cracker crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and a beaten egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Escalloped Cheese

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.

Layer the dish

  1. Grate the cheese or cut it into small bits.

  2. In a baking dish, layer the cheese and cracker crumbs alternately.

  3. Sprinkle each layer with pepper, coarse sea salt, and bits of butter.

  4. Fill the dish about ¾ full.

Add the custard and bake

  1. Beat the eggs with enough milk to fill the dish.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the layers.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until light brown.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Cheese
Provides the main flavor and a rich, creamy body as it melts into the layers.
Eggs
Set with the milk as it bakes, binding the dish into a custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks through the layers and sets with the eggs.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg mixture, giving the layers structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until just light brown. Egg proteins set as the custard heats. Baking too long pushes them too far, leaving the dish dry, firm, or grainy instead of soft and creamy.

“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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