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Cheese Bombe

A fried choux pastry filled with cheese, served with Montpelier butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and swiss cheese work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 413 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Bombe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux paste

  1. Make a choux paste by combining flour, butter, and water in a pot over heat.

  2. Once the mixture is smooth, remove from heat and work in the egg yolks one at a time.

Fry and serve

  1. Fold in the egg whites and grated Swiss cheese gently.

  2. Fry small spoonfuls of the mixture in hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Serve with Montpelier butter.

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 + swiss cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together413 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + swiss cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 starch structure of the choux paste that holds the batter together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the choux paste, contributing tenderness and flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich the paste and add richness and binding to the batter.
Egg whites
Folded in to lighten the mixture and help it puff when cooked.
Swiss cheese
Adds savory flavor and melting richness throughout the fried bombe.

The step that matters

Fry small spoonfuls of the mixture in hot fat until golden brown.. If the fat is not hot enough, the spoonfuls absorb oil and turn greasy before browning. Enough heat sets the outside quickly so the inside stays light and cooked 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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