Name: Cheese Ball with Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: 2 cups grated cheese; 1 cup fine bread crumbs; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; a few grains of cayenne pepper; 2 eggs; crushed cracker crumbs; butter; tomato sauce; buttered toast

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Ball with Tomato Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mix together the grated cheese, bread crumbs, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.
Add the beaten eggs and shape the mixture into small balls.

Bake and serve

Roll the balls in crushed cracker crumbs and place them in a well-buttered baking dish.
Bake for 10 minutes.
Serve on triangles of buttered toast with tomato sauce.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 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

Grated cheese: Provides the main flavor and fat, and melts to bind the balls together.
Eggs: Bind the cheese and crumbs together so the balls hold their shape while baking.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and add body, giving the balls a softer, less dense texture.

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits about as well
Tomatothe original
Asparagusfits about as well
Mustardfits about as well

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