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Cheese Sticks

Cheese sticks are baked strips of dough made with flour, shortening, cheese, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,426 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Sticks

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 the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and shortening until crumbly.

  3. Add the grated cheese and mix well.

  4. Gradually add milk to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt over the rolled dough.

  3. Cut the dough into narrow strips.

  4. Bake until light brown and thoroughly done.

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

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,860 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once combined with liquid.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to create a tender, crumbly texture.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat, and helps bind the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown and thoroughly done. Baking long enough sets the starch and dries the strips so they turn crisp rather than soft. Stopping early leaves a pale, doughy center, while overbaking can make them bitter from browned cheese.

“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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