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Cheese Roasted, to Come Up After Dinner

A toasted bread dish topped with a mixture of cheese, egg yolks, butter, mustard, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Roasted, to Come Up After Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the topping

  1. Mix the grated cheese, egg yolks, butter, grated bread, mustard, salt, and pepper in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Toast some bread and cut it into pieces.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the cheese mixture thickly on the bread pieces.

  2. Place them in a Dutch oven covered with a dish until heated through.

  3. Remove the dish and let the cheese brown slightly.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Melts and browns to form the savoury topping.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the cheese mixture together.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, helping the topping spread and melt smoothly.
Grated bread
Adds body to the mixture and helps soak up the melted fat.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese and butter.

The step that matters

Remove the dish and let the cheese brown slightly. Cheese browns quickly once the cover is off, and the Maillard reaction that gives browning also brings bitter flavours if overdone. Watch closely for a light golden colour.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, butter, bread, 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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