Why it works: Cheese and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,861 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Cheese Straws
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Roll the pastry dough to ¼ inch thick.
Sprinkle half of the dough with grated cheese, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.
Fold the dough and press the edges together.
Fold again and roll to ¼ inch thick.
Sprinkle again with seasoned cheese and repeat the folding process.
Shape and bake
Cut the dough into very narrow strips.
Bake until golden.
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.
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Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,861 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Puff or plain pastry dough
- Forms the flaky, layered body of the straws as it is folded and rolled.
- Grated cheese
- Melts and browns during baking, adding savoury flavour and a crisp golden surface.
The step that matters
Rolling to an even ¼ inch thickness before each fold. Even thickness makes the layers bake at the same rate, so the straws come out uniformly crisp rather than burnt in places or doughy in others.
“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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