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Nut and Cheese Koast

A baked casserole of grated cheese, walnuts, onions, and breadcrumbs, flavored with lemon juice and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Nut and Cheese Koast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cook the onions in the butter with a little water until tender.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix the grated cheese, walnuts, lemon juice, bread crumbs, and cooked onions.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the water used to cook the onions.

  3. Pour the mixture into a shallow baking dish.

  4. Bake until browned in a 350°F (175°C) 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 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
Melts and binds the mixture while adding rich flavor and savory depth.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the casserole body and a light, set texture.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter note that contrasts the cheese.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the onions soften and carry flavor.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with the onion cooking water. The mixture must be damp enough for the crumbs to soften and hold together. Too dry, it bakes crumbly; too wet, it turns soggy and does not brown well.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, walnut, lemon, bread, pepper. 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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