Name: Toast, Buttered, and Cheese
Ingredients: ½ pound old Cheshire cheese; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 hard-boiled egg yolk; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 slice bread, ½ inch thick

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Toast, Buttered, and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheese mixture

Crush the cheese in a mortar.
Pound in the butter, egg yolk, and mustard until well combined.

Toast and top the bread

Cut off the crust from the bread and toast it on both sides.
Spread the cheese mixture on the toasted bread.

Melt and serve

Place it in a Dutch oven before a clear fire until the cheese is melted, about 3-4 minutes.
Serve very hot.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Old cheshire cheese: Provides the main body and rich, savoury flavour of the topping.
Butter: Adds fat that softens the cheese and helps it spread and melt smoothly.
Hard-boiled egg yolk: Adds richness and helps bind the cheese and butter into a smooth paste.
Mustard: Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese and butter.
Bread: Forms the crisp toasted base that holds the melted cheese topping.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese under a clear fire. Cheese turns greasy and tough if overheated, so it should melt just until soft and bubbling. Watching it closely keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

Asparagusfits better
Potatofits about as well
Chivefits about as well
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, egg, bread. 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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Toast, Buttered, and Cheese