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Cheese rUEPARATIONS

A baked cheese and breadcrumb mixture with eggs and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cheese 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 rUEPARATIONS

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk until soft.

Make the mixture

  1. Add mustard, salt, pepper, cheese, and beaten egg yolks; mix well.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a shallow pan or paper cases.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 minutes until golden.

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 + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Mustard + cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 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

Eggs
Whites trapped by folding add lightness, and yolks help bind the mixture and enrich it.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they absorb liquid and give the bake a soft, tender body.
Cheese
Melts and browns in the oven, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the custard-like mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that makes the bake light. Stirring vigorously knocks this air out, so the result turns dense instead of airy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, pepper, cheese):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, pepper, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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