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Dessert

Cheese Crackers

Baked milk crackers topped with butter, grated cheese, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Crackers

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Butter the large round milk crackers and place them on buttered paper in a dripping pan.

  2. Top each cracker with grated cheese, about 1 inch thick, and add 1 tablespoon of cream.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until the crackers absorb the cheese and turn light brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large round milk crackers
Form the base that soaks up the melted cheese and holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crackers brown evenly in the oven.
Grated cheese
Melts over the crackers to add savory flavor and a golden, browned top.
Cream
Adds moisture so the cheese softens and spreads smoothly as it melts.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until light brown. A low, slow oven lets the cheese melt and soak into the crackers gently. A hotter oven can scorch the cheese or dry out the crackers before the cheese has softened through.

“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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