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Preserves and Other Dainties

A layered pie of onions, cheese, butter, and flour baked until browned.

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 ↓

Preserves and Other Dainties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions small and spread a layer over the bottom of a small pie dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Grate the cheese and sprinkle it thickly over the onions, seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add another layer of onions covered with grated cheese, seasoned as before.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter, dredge lightly with flour, and bake until brown, about 10 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 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

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, savoury flavour of the dish as they cook.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding richness and a savoury crust.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the top brown and gives a rich flavour.
Flour
Lightly dusted on top, it helps the surface brown and thicken the juices.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. The top should brown without the onions drying out. Browning depends on surface heat, fat and sugars, so watch the colour closely while it bakes.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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