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Cheese Dishes

A toasted bread topped with melted cheese, butter, and milk, optionally flavored with mustard, cayenne pepper, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Dishes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Grate enough old cheese to cover the prepared toast.

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Combine cheese, butter, and milk in a saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the cheese mixture over the toast.

  2. For a richer version, add mustard, cayenne, and egg yolks to the cheese mixture before spreading it on the toast.

  3. Set the toast in the oven to melt the cheese.

  4. Bake in a hot oven (400°F) for 4 minutes.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

Old cheese
Melts into the sauce and gives the toast its main flavour and body.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cheese mixture smooth and rich.
Milk
Loosens the cheese so it blends into a smooth, spreadable mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the cheese mixture over low heat until smooth. Cheese proteins tighten and turn grainy or oily when overheated, so gentle low heat and steady stirring keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, milk, pepper, bread. 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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