Why it works: Cheese and butter 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 Straws
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Combine grated cheese, salt, pepper, melted butter, and cold water in a bowl.
Add flour until the mixture forms a soft dough that no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl.
Shape and bake
Dust a molding board with flour and place the dough on it.
Sift flour over the dough and roll it out to the thickness of a thin pie crust.
Cut the rolled dough into strips ¼ inch wide.
Bake the strips 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 + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,861 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter and flour 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
- Grated cheese
- Provides rich flavor and fat that helps the dough hold together and brown.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
- Cold water
- Moistens the dough so the flour can bind it into a workable mass.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dough once it is mixed and rolled.
The step that matters
Rolling the dough to an even thin thickness. Dough rolled unevenly bakes unevenly, so thin spots over-brown or burn while thick spots stay soft. Keeping the dough at a uniform thickness, like a thin pie crust, lets the straws bake to an even golden color and crisp texture.
“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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