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Cheese and Onions

A baked dish of onions and cheese, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter 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 and Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Peel and chop the onions.

  2. Melt the butter in a dish.

  3. Add the onions with a little pepper and salt; cover and stew in the oven until tender but not soft.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the onions on a flat dish and cover with thin slices of cheese, without crust.

  2. Toast quickly in the oven and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cheese + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

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

  5. 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

Cheese
Melts into a rich, savoury topping that browns and binds the dish.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they stew, adding moisture and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the onions cook gently without sticking.

The step that matters

Stew the onions until tender but not soft. Slow cooking in fat softens the onions and draws out their sweetness. Overcooking breaks them down into a mush that leaves a watery base under the cheese.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, 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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