Name: Cheese Relish
Ingredients: 2 ½ cups common crackers, finely rolled; 3 tablespoons grated cheese; 1 cup milk; small piece of butter; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the relish

Heat the milk in a saucepan.
Add the finely rolled crackers, grated cheese, and butter.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Serve

Serve immediately.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,861 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Common crackers: Absorb the hot milk and swell into a thick, spreadable body.
Grated cheese: Adds savory flavor and richness that carries through the relish.
Milk: Liquid that softens the crushed crackers and forms the relish's base.
Butter: Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and richer taste.

“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.