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Cheese Toasted

A toasted bread topped with melted cheese, butter, white wine, mustard, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Toasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Toast the bread slightly on one side until just browned.

  2. Remove the crust from the bread.

  3. Place the bread on a cheese toaster.

Prepare the cheese

  1. Cut the cheese to fit the bread.

  2. Remove any rind and rotten parts from the cheese.

  3. Spread butter on the bottom of a plate.

  4. Place the cheese on the plate.

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Pour in the white wine and mustard.

  2. Cover with another plate.

  3. Heat over a chafing dish for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Stir until mixed.

Finish and brown

  1. Pour the cheese mixture over the toasted bread.

  2. Brown it with a salamander.

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

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into a creamy, stretchy layer that forms the main body of the topping.
Bread
Provides a toasted base that holds the melted topping.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the cheese and helps the topping brown.
White wine
Thins the melting cheese and adds a light acidity.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Browning under the salamander. Cheese browns and scorches quickly under high direct heat, and its fats and proteins can burn before the top turns golden and bubbly. Watch it closely and stop as soon as it is evenly browned.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cheese, butter, white wine, pepper. 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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