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Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are baked dough rings filled with cheese sticks and served cold with salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Straws

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Cut the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the grated cheese, salt, baking powder, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Moisten the mixture with milk and mix until soft.

Shape

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut into rings the size of a half dollar.

  3. Cut into straws 4 inches long and ¼ inch wide.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 10 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roll in salt while hot.

  3. Put 3 or 4 straws in each ring.

  4. Serve cold with salad.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the baked straws together.
Butter
Cut into the flour to add fat, giving the straws a tender, crumbly texture.
Grated cheese
Adds rich savory flavor and fat to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the straws rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour and butter bind into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Mixing after adding the milk. Once liquid is added, flour proteins form gluten, and mixing too much makes the dough tough and the straws hard instead of crisp and tender. Mix only until the dough is soft and holds together.

“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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