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Bread

Cheese Dreams

A grilled cheese sandwich with New York cheese, sea salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Dreams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the New York cheese into slices about ½ inch thick.

  2. Place slices of cheese between two slices of bread.

  3. Season the cheese with coarse sea salt and a little cayenne pepper.

Cook

  1. Broil the sandwiches in a gas range until the bread is toasted and the cheese is melted.

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. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  3. 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

New york cheese
Melts to provide the rich, gooey filling that holds the sandwich together.
Bread slices
Toast under the broiler to form a crisp, golden exterior around the melted cheese.

The step that matters

Broil until the bread is toasted and the cheese is melted. Broiling heat browns the bread quickly while melting the cheese. If the sandwich is left too long, the bread can burn before the cheese softens, and if removed too early the cheese stays firm and cold in the center.

“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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