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Dessert

Cheese Straws

A pastry made with flour, cheese, lard, salt, and water, baked into thin strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,860 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, grated cheese, lard, and salt.

  2. Add water gradually until the mixture resembles pastry dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and cut it into strips.

  2. Place the strips on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 pastry once mixed with water.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and some browning as the straws bake.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and keeps it short and crisp.

The step that matters

Add water gradually. Adding water slowly lets the flour absorb it evenly. Too much water at once makes the dough sticky and tough, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard 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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