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Cheese-straws

Cheese-Straws are thin strips of dough made with grated cheese, flour, butter, and water, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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).

Make the dough

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

  2. Add cold water gradually until the mixture resembles pie dough.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Cheese + flourtop 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

Cheese
Provides flavor and fat, and helps the dough brown as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once moistened with water.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and contributes to a crisp texture.
Cold water
Moistens the flour so the dough holds together without becoming tough.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water. Adding water gradually and keeping it cold limits gluten development, so the dough stays tender and flaky rather than tough. Too much water makes it sticky and hard to roll thin.

“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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