Skip to main content
Bread

Cheese Toast

A quick cheese toast made by melting butter, cheese, cream, eggs, salt, and baking soda, then serving on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cheese Toast

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the cheese and beat until thoroughly melted.

  3. Stir in the cream, eggs, salt, and baking soda.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on toast.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 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. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce and supplies the main flavor and body of the dish.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to thicken the sauce and give it a richer, more cohesive texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the sauce smooth and rich rather than tight.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the cheese melt evenly at the start.
Baking soda
Raises the sauce's pH, which helps cheese melt smoothly and reduces stringiness.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and eggs gently. Eggs thicken when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot or is stirred too vigorously, the eggs can scramble or curdle. Keeping the heat moderate and mixing steadily lets the proteins set evenly into a smooth sauce.

“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.

More cheese toast recipes

Welsh 14with Ale 6with Mustard 5Tomato 4with Port Wine 3Corn and Tomato 3 See all 140 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes