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Dessert

Cheese Pastry

A baked pastry made with Parmesan cheese, butter, flour, egg, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,163 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cheese Pastry

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Dust the cheese with cayenne pepper.

  3. Flour the board and rolling pin.

Make the paste

  1. Work the butter into the egg.

  2. Mix the self-raising flour with the cheese.

  3. Combine with the egg mixture to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the paste.

  2. Stamp into fancy designs.

  3. Brush with a little egg.

  4. Bake until nut brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Dust with grated cheese.

  2. Cool.

  3. Serve.

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. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and helps the pastry brown and firm up when baked.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the pastry rich and tender.
Self-raising flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the shaped pastry together.
Egg
Binds the dough into a paste and, brushed on top, promotes browning.

The step that matters

Bake until nut brown. Cheese and egg brown quickly, so the pastry can scorch before it is cooked through. Watch the colour closely and remove it once golden brown.

“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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