Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Sandwiches

A sandwich made with a creamy mixture of cream cheese, milk, eggs, salt, red pepper, and white mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grate the cream cheese finely.

  2. Heat the milk until hot, then stir in the grated cheese.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and season with salt, red pepper, and white mustard.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the cheese mixture between slices of bread and toast in the oven.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Cream cheese + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eastern cream cheese
Provides the main cheese flavour and body of the filling once melted into the milk.
Milk
Loosens the grated cheese so it blends into a smooth, spreadable mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks, giving the filling structure.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. Adding eggs to very hot cheese can scramble them and leave a grainy texture. Letting the mixture cool before spreading keeps the filling smooth and lets it thicken slightly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, milk, egg, pepper, bread. 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.

You might also like