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Cheese Straws

Thin, stiff-paste savoury straws of Parmesan, butter, flour and cream cheese, baked until golden and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and cream cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 311 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the Parmesan cheese, butter, flour, cream cheese, and egg yolk into a stiff paste.

  2. Flavor the mixture with cayenne, salt, and pounded mace.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the mixture thinly and cut it into fingers about 4 inches long and ½ inch wide.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, piled on a dish in transverse rows.

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. Parmesan cheese + cream cheesetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together311 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Butter + cream cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that helps the straws taste rich.
Butter
Provides fat that makes the dough short and tender when baked.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the stiff paste together.
Cream cheese
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the dough soft and workable.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness that helps it brown.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thinly. Thin pieces bake through and turn crisp; thick dough stays soft and doughy in the center. Even thickness also ensures the straws brown evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parmesan cheese, butter, flour, cream cheese, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parmesan cheese, butter, flour, cream cheese, egg, pepper. 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.

More cheese straws recipes

Cayenne 11 See all 284 →

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