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Dessert

Cheese Biscuits and Straws

A baked snack of cheese, butter, flour, and egg yolk, shaped into biscuits or thin strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Biscuits and Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Pound or grate the cheese and season it with cayenne.

  2. Rub the cheese and butter into the flour.

  3. Moisten with the egg yolk.

  4. Roll the paste thin.

Make the biscuits

  1. Cut into small biscuits using a tin cutter.

  2. Bake the biscuits for 10 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

Make the cheese straws

  1. Roll the paste thin for cheese straws.

  2. Cut into narrow strips.

  3. Twist the strips.

  4. Bake them on greased paper until golden.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb, carrying flavour through the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the paste together once rolled and baked.
Cheese
Supplies the main savoury flavour and some fat, which adds richness to the biscuits.
Egg yolk
Binds the dry ingredients into a workable paste and adds richness.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste thin. Thin paste bakes quickly and crisply. If it is rolled thick, the biscuits and straws stay soft and doughy in the middle instead of turning crisp and golden.

“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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