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Cheese, Toasted, or Scotch Rare-bit

A toasted cheese dish flavored with mustard and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese, Toasted, or Scotch Rare-bit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cheese into thin slices.

Make the toasted cheese

  1. Melt the cheese in a cheese toaster on a hot plate or over steam.

  2. Add mustard and pepper to the melted cheese and stir until dissolved.

  3. Brown the cheese before the fire or with a salamander.

Serve

  1. Fill the cheese toaster with hot water and serve with dry or buttered toast.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Slices of rich cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich layer that forms the body of the dish.
Toast
Provides a crisp base that holds the melted cheese.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Melt the cheese gently. Cheese turns grainy and oily when overheated, because its proteins tighten and fat separates. Gentle heat over a hot plate or steam keeps it smooth and stretchy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, 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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