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Cheese Toasted, or Rabbit

A toasted bread topped with melted cheese, white wine, mustard, pepper, and 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, or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Remove the crust from the bread and place it on a cheese-toaster.

  3. Pare off the rind from the cheese, cut out any specks, and place it on the toasted bread.

  4. Grease a plate with butter and place the cheese on the greased plate.

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Pour in 2-3 teaspoons of white wine and a little mustard.

  2. Cover with another plate and set it on a chafing dish over coals for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Stir the cheese mixture until well combined.

Brown and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toasted bread.

  2. Brown the cheese under a salamander or broiler until melted.

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 and browns to form the main body and flavour of the topping.
White wine
Adds moisture and mild acidity that loosens the cheese as it melts.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Browning the cheese under the broiler. The surface sugars and proteins brown quickly at high heat, so the cheese can scorch before it has melted evenly. Watch it closely and remove it once melted and lightly 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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