Name: Cheese Fingers
Ingredients: ¼ pound puff pastry; a pinch of salt; 2 ounces grated Parmesan cheese; a little cayenne pepper or Nepaul pepper or a few drops of Tabasco sauce

Why it works: Parmesan cheese and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,322 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cheese Fingers

Ingredients

¼ pound puff pastry
a pinch of salt
2 ounces grated Parmesan cheese
a little cayenne pepper or Nepaul pepper or a few drops of Tabasco sauce

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Combine the puff pastry, salt, Parmesan, and cayenne in a bowl.
Roll the mixture out to about ½ inch thick.
Cut into oblong shapes, approximately 3 inches long.

Bake and serve

Bake until golden and serve hot on a napkin.

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.

Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,322 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry: Provides the flaky, layered base that gives the fingers their light texture.
Parmesan cheese: Adds savory, salty flavor and browns during baking.
Cayenne pepper: Adds gentle heat that contrasts with the rich cheese and pastry.

“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.