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Cheese Toast

A toasted bread topped with a melted cheese and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Cheese Toast

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cheese, beaten egg, butter, and sweet milk.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring until smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the nicely browned toast.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it rich flavour and a smooth, creamy body.
Egg
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving it a body that holds on the toast.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cheese and egg cook into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and a silkier texture in the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking over low heat while stirring. Egg proteins set quickly when heated, so high heat or no stirring can scramble the egg and leave lumps. Gentle heat with constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth as the cheese melts.

“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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