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Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese Straws are baked strips of flour, butter, Parmesan, eggs, mustard, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,163 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. On a clean surface, mix flour, butter, Parmesan cheese, eggs, mustard, and seasoning into a stiff paste.

  2. Sprinkle the surface with flour and roll out the paste to ⅙ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the rolled paste into strips 5 inches long and ¼ inch wide.

  2. Place the strips on a clean baking sheet.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until light golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the straws arranged in a pyramid on a napkin.

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. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parmesan cheese + mustardtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together545 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff paste together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour in the baked straws.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and helps the straws brown.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.

The step that matters

Bake until light golden brown. Baking in a hot oven sets the thin strips and browns the cheese and proteins. Pulling them too early leaves them pale and soft, while overbaking makes them dry and bitter.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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

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