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Cheese Straws

Cheese Straws are baked dough strips made with flour, cheese, butter, salt, baking powder, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, chopped cheese, butter, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Add water gradually until the dough is workable.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough like pie crust.

  2. Cut into strips and place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake until light brown.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,860 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the dough's structure once water is added, holding the strips together.
Chopped cheese
Adds fat and rich flavor, and its milk proteins help the straws brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the flour, giving the straws a tender, crumbly texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it bakes, lifting the dough and giving a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Add water gradually until the dough is workable. Too much water at once makes the dough sticky and tough, while handling it too much develops gluten and makes the straws dense. Adding water a little at a time keeps the dough tender and easy to roll.

“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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