Name: Cheese Pyramids
Ingredients: ½ cup Whipped Cream; 3 pieces Cheese; Pepper to taste; Cayenne to taste; Cheese Biscuits; Little grated Cheese; Watercress

Why it works: Biscuit and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cheese Pyramids

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the grated cheese, pepper, cayenne, and whipped cream together.
Place a spoonful of the mixture on top of each biscuit.
Top with three small pieces of cheese.
Arrange on a bed of watercress.

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.

Biscuit + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cream + cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,655 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,235 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped cream: Adds moisture and a light, airy texture to the cheese topping.
Cheese: Supplies rich, savory flavor and fat to the topping.
Grated cheese: Blends into the cream to give a concentrated cheese flavor throughout the mixture.
Cheese biscuits: Provide a crisp, sturdy base that holds the topping.

“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.