Skip to main content
Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are puff pastry strips filled with grated cheese, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,588 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to a thickness of a silver dollar.

  2. Cut the pastry into strips 1.5 inches wide and 4 inches long.

Assemble

  1. Place a little grated cheese along the center of half the strips.

  2. Top each cheese strip with another strip without cheese to form a sandwich.

  3. Brush each sandwich with the egg yolk.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  2. Serve cold or warm, piled on a napkin, with mustard and cress or parsley garnish.

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. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cheese + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,507 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff paste or rough puff
Forms flaky layers that puff and separate when baked, giving the straws their crisp texture.
Grated cheese
Melts inside the pastry, adding savory richness and flavor to each straw.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top, it promotes golden browning and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Brush each sandwich with the egg yolk. Egg yolk gives the pastry its golden colour through browning and a glossy finish. Brushing too thickly can pool the yolk and seal the edges, which stops the layers from rising evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, mustard. 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.

More cheese straws recipes

Cayenne 11 See all 284 →

You might also like

Cheese BallsCheese Balls97 recipesCheese CakeCheese Cake55 recipesCream CheeseCream Cheese46 recipesLemon PieLemon Pie37 recipes