Name: Russian Sauce for Cold Meats
Ingredients: ½ lb grated cheese; 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce; a few drops of Tabasco

Why it works: Cheese and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Russian Sauce for Cold Meats

Ingredients

½ lb grated cheese
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
a few drops of Tabasco

Directions

Mix the grated cheese and Worcestershire sauce together.
Add a few drops of Tabasco and mix well.

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.

Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,987 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese: Provides fat and savory flavor, and melts into a smooth, creamy body when mixed.
Worcestershire sauce: Adds savory, tangy depth that balances the richness of the cheese.
Tabasco: Adds a sharp pepper heat in small amounts.

“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.