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Dessert

Cheese Crackers

Cheese crackers are soda crackers topped with butter, cheese, and mustard, baked until melted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Crackers

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter the soda crackers.

  3. Cover each cracker with very thin slices of cheese.

  4. Spread prepared mustard over the cheese.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the crackers in a dripping pan and bake until the butter and cheese melt together.

  2. 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.

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

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

  2. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts over the crackers, adding richness and moisture so the surface browns lightly.
Cheese
Melts into a soft, gooey layer that binds the topping together and adds savoury flavour.
Soda crackers
Form the crisp base that holds the butter and cheese while baking.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that balances the richness of the melted cheese.

The step that matters

Bake until the butter and cheese melt together. Heat must be high enough to melt the cheese fully without drying or burning it. Thin slices melt quickly, so over-baking can make the cheese oily and the crackers hard.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese. 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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