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Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese Straws are baked pastry strips made from flour, cheese, spices, lemon, egg yolks, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, grated cheese, salt, white pepper, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice, egg yolks, and melted butter to form a paste.

  3. Roll out the paste to about ⅛ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the pastry into strips like straws.

  2. Lay the strips on a floured baking pan.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until crisp.

Serve

  1. Transfer to oval dishes covered with napkins for serving.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 structure of the paste so the straws hold their shape while baking.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and richness to the dough.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste together.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and helps it crisp as it bakes.

The step that matters

Roll out the paste to about ⅛ inch thick. Even thickness makes the straws bake at the same rate, so thin spots do not burn while thick ones stay soft. Thin dough also crisps fully in the oven.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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