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Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese Straws are baked strips of dough made with flour, cheese, salt, cayenne pepper, egg yolk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,655 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

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 the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, grated cheese, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk and enough cream to form a soft paste.

  3. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into strips the length of your middle finger and one-third as wide.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until pale brown.

  2. Before removing from the oven, brush with egg white and sprinkle with powdered cheese.

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

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

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Prepared flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat, and helps the straws brown as they bake.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness, helping it hold a firm shape.
Cream
Adds moisture so the flour and other ingredients form a soft, workable paste.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly. Thin dough bakes through and turns crisp; thick dough stays soft and doughy in the center. Even thickness also helps the strips bake at the same rate.

“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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