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Cheese Toast

Cheese Toast is a toasted bread topped with melted cheese, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cheese Toast

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Cheese Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the melted cheese

  1. Cut the cheese into thin slices.

  2. Melt the cheese with a bit of butter in a cheese toaster over the fire, stirring occasionally.

  3. Serve the melted cheese on a slice of toasted bread with the crust removed.

  4. Eat with mustard, salt, and pepper.

Make the savoury topping

  1. Mix bread crumbs with beaten egg yolks and cream.

  2. Add butter, grated cheese, mustard, salt, and pepper to the mixture.

  3. Heat the mixture in a saucepan, stirring until well heated.

  4. Spread the mixture thickly on small slices of toasted bread and brown under a salamander or hot shovel.

  5. Serve 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + breadtop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

Gloucester cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich layer that forms the main body of the toast.
Egg yolks
Thicken the topping and add richness when gently heated with the other ingredients.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and give the topping body so it holds when spread.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, helping the yolks blend into a spreadable mixture.
Grated cheese
Adds more melting cheese and flavour to the topping, helping it brown.

The step that matters

Heat the topping gently while stirring. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, spreadable mixture. Constant stirring keeps the heat even.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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