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Melted Cheese

A toasted bread topped with a melted cheese mixture of grated Cheshire cheese, egg yolks, butter, mustard, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Melted Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat a Dutch oven.

Make the topping

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated cheese, egg yolks, grated bread, butter, mustard, salt, and pepper until well combined.

  2. Toast slices of bread and cut them into pieces.

  3. Spread the cheese mixture thickly on the toasted bread pieces.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the bread in the Dutch oven, cover with a dish, and heat until hot throughout.

  2. Remove the dish and let the cheese brown slightly.

  3. Serve immediately while hot.

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

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

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

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 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

Cheshire cheese
Melts and browns to give the topping its rich, savory flavor and body.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness, helping it set into a cohesive spread when heated.
Grated bread
Provides bulk and absorbs fat so the topping holds together rather than running off.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth spreadability and helps the cheese brown as it heats.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese and egg.

The step that matters

Heating under the cover. Heat must be gentle and even so the egg yolks warm and thicken without scrambling, while the cheese softens. Too much heat can curdle the yolks or burn the browning cheese.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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