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Toast with Olive Oil and Cheese

A simple toasted bread topped with olive oil, Parmesan cheese, pepper, and lemon juice, baked until melted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Toast with Olive Oil and Cheese

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

  1. Dip the toast in olive oil and arrange on a dish.

  2. Sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese, pepper, and lemon juice over the toast.

Bake and serve

  1. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes until the cheese melts.

  2. Serve immediately after removing from the oven.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + parmesan cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Coats the toast, adding richness and helping it crisp and brown in the oven.
Grated parmesan cheese
Melts into a savory, golden topping that binds to the toast.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich oil and cheese.

The step that matters

Baking until the cheese just melts. Cheese that is left too long in the oven can darken, turn greasy, and become tough or burnt. Removing it as soon as the cheese melts keeps it smooth and golden.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, parmesan cheese, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, parmesan cheese, 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.

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