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Sauce

Slewed Cheese

A cheese sauce made with butter, cream, eggs, onions, and pepper, served on soft toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Slewed Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the cheese

  1. Dissolve cheese slices with butter and pepper over steam.

  2. Serve on soft toast.

Make the sauce

  1. Cut cheese into moderate slices and place in a saucepan with butter and cream.

  2. Simmer gently until cheese is dissolved, then cool.

  3. For every 4 ounces of cheese, add 2 beaten egg yolks and shape as desired.

  4. Brown under a broiler or salamander.

Add the onions

  1. Stew onions in water until soft, then add cheese and butter.

  2. Stir for 1 minute after adding cheese.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give its body, savoury flavour and stretch.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the cheese smooth and glossy.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set and bind it into a smooth mass.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the melted cheese.
Onions
Soften when stewed, adding sweetness and a mellow aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the cheese is dissolved. High heat tightens cheese proteins and can squeeze out fat, leaving the sauce grainy or oily. Gentle heat lets the cheese melt evenly into a smooth emulsion.

Swap the onion

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

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

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