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Cheese Toast

Cheese toast is a simple baked toast topped with grated cheese, butter, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Cheese Toast

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 Toast

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, combine the grated cheese, butter, and beaten egg white.

Bake and serve

  1. Heap the mixture onto rounds of toast.

  2. Place the toast in the oven and bake until brown.

  3. Serve hot with tea or coffee.

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

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

  2. Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

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

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 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

American cheese
Melts into the topping and provides the main body and savory flavor.
Egg white
Binds the cheese and butter together and helps the topping set as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the topping melt smoothly and brown.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Baking only until the cheese is melted and lightly browned keeps it from drying out or becoming tough, since overheated cheese loses moisture and turns rubbery.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Almondfits less well
  4. Peasfits less well

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