Skip to main content
Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese Straws are baked strips of cheese and flour dough seasoned with salt and cayenne.

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

Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated cheese, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the butter and enough cold water to form a dough that can be rolled thin.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into strips.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for 5 to 10 minutes until golden.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor, fat, and golden browning as its proteins and sugars toast in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure of the dough once its proteins hydrate and form gluten.
Butter
Coats the flour and keeps the dough tender and flaky by separating layers of gluten.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water. Use only enough cold water to bring the dough together. Too much water or overworking develops gluten and makes the straws tough, while cold water keeps the butter firm so it creates tenderness.

“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