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Devilled Cheese

A cheese sandwich with melted cheese, pickles, butter, cayenne pepper, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Devilled Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Melt the cheese in a pan with the butter.

  2. Once melted, add the chopped pickles, cayenne pepper, and mustard.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on rounds of 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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into a smooth, creamy base that gives the dish its body and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the cheese melt smoothly and stay glossy rather than stringy.
Hot pickles
Add sharp acidity and heat that cut through the richness of the melted cheese.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese with the butter. Cheese held at high heat can turn grainy or oily because its proteins tighten and separate from the fat. Melting gently over low heat keeps the mixture smooth and cohesive.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, pepper, mustard. 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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