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Cheese Canopees

Cheese canapes are slices of stale bread fried in butter, topped with mustard, cheese, salt, and pepper, then baked until melted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Canopees

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut stale baker's bread into slices ½ inch thick.

  2. Use a half-moon cutter for crescents or cut into diamonds.

Fry and top

  1. Fry the bread slices in hot butter until very pale brown.

  2. Spread a little thin mustard on each slice.

  3. Add a layer of rich cheese on top.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and white pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a sharp oven at 400°F (200°C) until the cheese is melted.

  2. Serve hot on a napkin.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale baker's bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the topping while it bakes.
Butter
Fries the bread, adding richness and promoting gentle browning.
Rich cheese
Melts over the bread to give a soft, savoury topping.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour that cuts through the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until very pale brown. Frying seals the surface and drives off moisture, so the slice stays crisp under the cheese instead of going soggy. Browning too far turns it bitter, so stop at very pale.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, mustard, 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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