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Roasted Cheese

A toasted bread topped with a mixture of grated cheese, egg yolks, bread crumbs, butter, mustard, pepper, and salt, then baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Roasted Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the topping

  1. Preheat a Dutch oven.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Add the grated cheese, bread crumbs, butter, mustard, pepper, and salt, then mix well.

Assemble and heat

  1. Toast the slice of bread.

  2. Cut it into square pieces.

  3. Spread the cheese mixture thickly over the toasted bread pieces.

  4. Cover with a tin cover and place in the Dutch oven until heated through.

  5. Remove the cover to allow the cheese to brown slightly.

Serve

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

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

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

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

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

Rich cheese
Melts into the topping and provides the main savory flavor and richness.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the cheese mixture into a spreadable paste.
Bread crumbs
Add body to the mixture so it spreads thickly rather than running.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the topping soften and brown.

The step that matters

Covering, then uncovering to brown. Covering traps steam so the cheese heats through gently without drying out. Removing the cover lets surface moisture escape, so the cheese browns slightly; leaving it covered too long leaves it pale and soft.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, bread, 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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