Name: Cheese Straws
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon butter; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 cup flour; White pepper to taste; ½ cup fresh bread crumbs; Cayenne pepper to taste; 1 tablespoon milk; 4 cups grated cheese

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 ↓

Cheese Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

Cream butter in a bowl.
Add flour, breadcrumbs, and grated cheese, then mix thoroughly.
Season with salt, white pepper, cayenne, and add milk.

Shape and bake

Roll dough to ¼ inch thick, then cut into strips ¼ inch wide and 6 inches long.
Cut a ring from the dough and bake it alongside the straws.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until brown.
Slip the ring over the straws to hold them in place when serving.

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).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds fat that enriches the dough and gives it a tender texture.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it roll and cut cleanly.
Grated cheese: Supplies the main flavour and fat, and browns during baking.
Fresh bread crumbs: Adds light body and moisture to the dough, keeping the straws from becoming too dense.
Milk: Adds moisture so the flour hydrates and the dough binds together.

The step that matters

Roll dough to ¼ inch thick. Even thickness makes the strips bake at the same rate, so thin pieces do not burn while thick ones stay doughy.

Swap the white pepper

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

Nutmegfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Parsleyfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, bread, pepper, milk, 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.