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Scalloped Cheese

A baked cheese dish with crumb topping and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Scalloped Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

  1. In a baking dish, layer bread or cracker crumbs, bits of butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add a layer of grated cheese.

  3. Continue to alternate layers of crumbs and cheese until the dish is full.

  4. Heap crumbs on top and pour 1 cup of cream over everything.

Bake

  1. Bake until light brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 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

Bread or cracker crumbs
Form the body of the dish and soak up the cream as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Grated cheese
Melts into the layers and adds rich, savoury flavour.
Cream
Moistens the crumbs and cheese, giving a soft, custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Browning depends on the top being exposed and the oven being hot enough. Pulling the dish too early leaves the cream loose and the crumbs pale, while over-baking can dry the cheese and toughen the top.

“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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