Skip to main content
Main

To Toast Cheese

A toasted bread topped with a cheese and breadcrumb mixture, browned until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

To Toast Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the topping

  1. In a saucepan, combine bread crumbs, fresh butter, grated cheese, egg yolks, cream, mustard, salt, and pepper, then heat the mixture while stirring until warmed through.

Assemble and brown

  1. Spread the mixture thickly on small pieces of toasted bread.

  2. Brown the topped toast using a salamander or hot shovel, or place in a Dutch oven until hot and cheese is slightly browned.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it hold together when warmed.
Grated cheese
Provides the main flavor and melts into the topping, then browns on the toast.
Bread crumbs
Give body to the topping and absorb the butter and cream.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the topping spread and brown.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor that balances the richness of the cheese and butter.

The step that matters

Heating the topping while stirring. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the mixture should be warmed gently and stirred until just warmed through to stay smooth and creamy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes