Name: Cheese Fingers
Ingredients: 2 oz. grated cheese; Pepper to taste; Salt to taste; Cayenne to taste; Puff pastry

Why it works: Cheese and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,861 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Fingers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Roll out half of the puff pastry thinly.
Sprinkle nearly all of the grated cheese over the pastry, along with the pepper, salt, and cayenne.
Roll out the remaining puff pastry and place it on top of the cheese mixture.
Cut the layered pastry into small finger shapes.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.
A few minutes before done, sprinkle the remaining cheese over the fingers.
Serve very 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.

Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,861 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

Grated cheese: Melts and browns during baking, adding rich flavor and savory richness to the layers.
Puff pastry: Its layered structure puffs and turns crisp and flaky as it bakes.
Cayenne: Adds gentle heat that contrasts with the rich cheese and pastry.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden. Puff pastry relies on steam from its butter layers to rise and crisp. If the oven is too cool, the butter leaks out and the pastry turns greasy and flat; if it is too hot or left too long, the cheese can scorch before the pastry is cooked through.

“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.